Purpose - Organizations are identifying strategic supply chain
relationships as a major source for competitive advantage. Interest in
the concept is becoming prevalent in many industries, including new
product development within the engineering sector. Collaborative
supplier relationships are being used in new product development as a
tool to share the development burden and reduce the development life
cycle. The purpose of this paper is to develop a business process to act
as a roadmap for optimum supplier integration.
Design/methodology/approach - An Engineering case organisation (Genco
Inc.) is explored to provide an understanding of the extent and timing
of supplier involvement, within new product development. Subsequently a
high level business process is developed to govern early supplier
integration, within a product development phase gate model. Findings -
The findings suggest and the business model strives to create a more
holistic view of supplier integration; extending the scope beyond the
individual firm-centric factors, the paper develops the importance of
supplier collaboration, design for supply chain and consideration of the
overall value network. The business process creates a move towards
defining supplier commodity types pre-project launch, strategically
timing and managing the extent of supplier integration. Practical
implications - The business process can be used to govern supplier
integration by categorising commodity type. Each supplier classification
can be phased into the development project to maximise the efficiency
of development collaboration. The resulting process also acts to share
accountability to create future roadmaps and accountability for future
competitive advantage. Originality/value - Currently, to the best of the
authors' knowledge, an individual case organisation has not been
documented with regards the extent of supplier involvement or timing,
nor has an early supplier involvement (ESI) business process been
developed.