Realising design engineering capability across distributed enterprise networks

Increasing productivity is a vital part of many engineering organisations’ strategies. Leading engineering firms have adopted a range of approaches to improve the productivity of their internal supplier networks. The next improvement opportunity lies in the productivity of external supplier networks. A number of management issues result from differences between external and internal supplier networks. This paper relates primarily to two of these issues. Firstly, the composition of external supplier networks (multiple independent organisations) results in overall proximities of the network being substantially lower, ie, the external networks are more heterogeneous. Secondly, the strategic goals of the organisations that form the network are unlikely to be aligned to the same extent as internal supplier networks. These issues link to a capability-based view of strategy, one which concerns itself with the dynamic processes operating within a firm and the way these are configured to offer ‘superior’ combinations that deliver competitive advantage which competitors cannot easily copy. This paper reports early results from research that applied principles from new product introduction systems to the design of supplier networks with a view to reducing variability in supplier capability assessment processes and, as a result, supplier network performance risks.