Potentials and Success Factors of Early Supplier Integration into Own Product Development

Abstract

The paper focuses on the research question, how a supplier integration into the own development process can be successfully arranged and what are the main potentials of early-stage supplier integration. A large-scale literature study has identified relevant success factors, including logistics peer-reviewed journals since the year 2000. Relevant peer-reviewed journals are used for the analysis, and the results are evaluated in the sense of a meta-study. Altogether 36 papers could be identified as relevant for this topic. Overall, five main success factors could be identified, which are detailed in the paper: (1) efficient supplier management, (2) strategic partnership and supplier network, (3) overall view of the supply chain, (4) contractual design of the partnership, (5) common interests and goals. The identification of potentials of early-stage supplier integration focuses on cost reduction, innovation and quality improvement, time-to-market reduction and flexibility. It would be interesting to learn from the experiences and opinions of companies and suppliers regarding joint development activities and their success. To gain practical insight a future research project should focus on interrogating customers and suppliers which factors, according to experience, successfully promote joint development from a practical perspective.