Development of a tool for self-assessing the project team's ability to co-design with suppliers in new product development
Résumé
It is now acknowledged that Early Supplier Involvement (ESI) in product development confers a competitive advantage. However, the implementation of ESI has been further extended to consider the successful product development, particularly through the Relationship Assessment Programme (RAP) model (Lamming et al., 1996), as an interaction process between a customer firm and a supplier. We adopt this point of view in our paper aiming at shaping the outline of customer's ability to co-design with suppliers in New Product Development (NPD). We introduce two dimensions to specify this ability: Open-mindedness and Capability. We propose a self assessment audit tool based on a maturity grid approach to assess through both these dimensions the ability of a project team to successfully set up and manage the co-development process with the suppliers. Our proposition was built up with the collaboration of six French industrial manufacturers, partners of the PRAXIS research project (Performance in Relationships Adapted to eXtended Innovation with Suppliers).