Evaluation of early supplier involvement in product development.

摘要

In the Asia-Pacific Region, industries are tend to concentrate geographically, link together vertically or horizontally and create mutual reinforcing process. By taking advantage from such industry cluster (Porter, 1990; Porter, 1998; Tsai & Li, 2009), companies have collaborated with their suppliers more in the product lifecycle to gain benefits of quick response to market, lower product cost and better quality. Hence, improving suppliers' co-design ability appears to be an important index for suppliers' overall performance and project achievement. However, most companies neither know if their suppliers are capable of supporting their new product development nor have clear statistical reports about suppliers' co-design ability in industries for reference, which obstruct these companies from seeking effective ways to enhance suppliers' performance. To address these issues, this study examined suppliers' contribution and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution satisfaction level toward suppliers' Collaborative Product Design (CPD) performance in the Taiwanese electronics industry. The result of this work provided statistical reports and advice to industries and PLM software vendors pursuing buyer-supplier relationship enhancement.