Authors: Finn Wynstra; Wendy van der Valk
Rapid technological change, shortened product life cycles, and increasing global competitionmake product development gain in importance every day. As a result of this, purchasing andsupplier involvement as one possible explanatory factor of product development success hasbeen gathering more and more attention from both managers and researchers. Involvingsuppliers in product development is supposed to have a positive effect on for exampledevelopment time and product quality. The food industry is a typical example of an industrythat could possibly benefit from supplier involvement in product development it has seenincreasing levels of outsourcing yet, at the same time, new product development failure ratesare substantial.This article uses an existing framework to study four cases of food and packagingdevelopment in Sweden and the Netherlands. The framework creates insights into theprocesses and conditions that are critically important for successfully involving suppliers inproduct development, not only in the short but also in the long term. As the framework hasmainly been developed on the basis of case studies in (electro-)mechanical engineeringindustries, the aim of these particular case studies is to investigate the framework’s possibleapplication to the food industry, and to identify particular problems in this industry.
Journal: ( – )
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Publish Year: 2004
Conference: Copenhagen, Denmark (2004)