Supply chain capability creation : the creation of the supply chain readiness for a new product during product development process

Abstract

<div lang="en" class="abs"><p class="abs_header">Abstract</p><p>The ever-increasing importance of creating and developing solutions and products that not only secure customer satisfaction but also enable cost efficient supply chain process are topical issues today. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to widen the scope of traditional new product development (NPD) process to cover the expected activities from supply chain (SC) process viewpoint. Supply chain capability creation (SCCC) process can be seen as the sub-process of the NPD process that extends the NPD process governance models, targets, key performance indicators, tasks, milestone criteria and roles. The main target of the SCCC process is to influence the product design itself and on the other hand to enable smooth and cost efficient product ramp up according to the SC strategy and supply chain models. The economics of the production and SC can be greatly impacted by the systematic preparation of the SC for the new product during the NPD process according to well-documented and implemented SCCC process.</p><p>Earlier NPD related research covers well the hardware and software development but the overall SC activities have not been studied systematically as a separate sub-process. In our research, we first review the literature and then analyse a case company that represents hardware, software, services and solutions type businesses.</p><p>The main contribution of this study is introducing a new SCCC sub-process as a part of NPD process. The SCCC process lowers the new product related supply chain costs due to better design of new products and systematic preparation of the SC to ramp up the new product. Nevertheless, the role of SCCC process as a means for strategic SC activities in NPD life-cycle phase sets further questions for researchers’ for systematic SCCC activities even prior the NPD phase, during technology development.</p></div>