Supply chain process readiness for rapid product development

• Main Author: Siddique, A. (Abduraheem)
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Oulu 2016
• Subjects: Industrial Engineering and Management
• Online Access: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201609092760; http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:fi:oulu-201609092760

The changing global market scenario along with intense competition and frequent adaptation to new technologies has created urgency in organisations across all fields to introduce products faster to market. To confront these challenges and complement the organisation’s existing product development process, the concept of Rapid product development (RaDe) has been introduced. RaDe is a development model, which aims to upgrade or redesign the existing products, resulting in new sales items using the existing available supply chain process capability. The objective of this thesis is to identify and analyse the process framework for supply management, manufacturing & testing, and logistic processes. The framework proposed ensures that the product design is aligned to the existing capability of the selected supply chain processes, supporting the core idea of RaDe. The framework is developed by identifying the overall strategic objectives of the selected supply chain processes. Further, the related product design guidelines and metrics are recognised from the corresponding design for Excellence (DFX) virtues and life phases to align and manage the product design according to the selected the supply chain process goals. The proposed theoretical framework is then analysed at three different case companies’ from various industrial domains to validate their supply chain process maturity level using capability maturity model integration (CMMI) model. This master thesis is steered in three phases, In the literature review phase the features of the proposed theoretical framework is recognised from the respective supply chain performance measures, product design guidelines and metrics viewpoint, In the empirical phase the current maturity state of the supply chain process of the selected case companies is identified concerning the framework, and in the result and discussion phase the managerial implication and future roadmap to achieve the highest maturity level are suggested based on the proposed framework.