Influence of Design-for-X Guidelines on the Matching between the Product Architecture and Supply Networks

Emerging global markets and fierce competition lead manufacturing firms to a transfer a large share of their value creation in development and production to suppliers that are arranged in a supply network. To prevail in this competitive situation manufacturing firms have to depend on the performance of their supply network, which is ideal for a matching between the product and its supply network. Besides manufacturing firms apply certain design guidelines to improve time-to-market and production cost as well as ensure product quality. Those guidelines (Design-for-X) focus on specific characteristics (e.g. manufacturing, assembly, procurement …) of the design and have a significant influence on the matching between product architecture and supply network. To unveil the effects of design guidelines on the matching, this paper presents an overview of relevant Design-for-X guidelines and elaborates their influence on either the product architecture or the supply network. In essence, these guidelines employ four technqiues (modularization, standardization, simplification and partnership), which are applied to an academic case study to evaluate their internal validity and operability.     «

Emerging global markets and fierce competition lead manufacturing firms to a transfer a large share of their value creation in development and production to suppliers that are arranged in a supply network. To prevail in this competitive situation manufacturing firms have to depend on the performance of their supply network, which is ideal for a matching between the product and its supply network. Besides manufacturing firms apply certain design guidelines to improve time-to-market and productio...     »