{"id":596,"date":"2018-04-17T12:19:54","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T16:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/?p=596"},"modified":"2018-04-17T12:19:54","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T16:19:54","slug":"supply-chain-integration-of-new-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/2018\/04\/17\/supply-chain-integration-of-new-products\/","title":{"rendered":"Supply Chain Integration of New Products"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last summer I worked with a medical device company based in London as they were finishing up on finalizing their first prototype.\u00a0 Throughout this process, there was a lot of discussion about the location of their suppliers and the integration of their supply chain.\u00a0 The company decided to go with suppliers that were close to the headquarters (so they stayed within an hour of London) so that they would be able to stay in close communication with them throughout the developmental phase and going into the launch of the product.\u00a0 Although they could have found suppliers that would have worked faster and cost less in places like China, they purposely chose suppliers in close proximity, so they would have better communication.\u00a0 Throughout my experience there I saw how useful this decision turned out being.\u00a0 Throughout the developmental\/prototype phase a lot of questions came up and a lot of issues had to be worked through.\u00a0 Luckily, the solution to this problem was only a quick trip of an hour away rather than an entire trip to a different country.\u00a0 This meant that problems could be solved a lot quicker, so in the end the process went faster and ended up being less costly due to low travel costs.\u00a0Also, the close proximity allowed the company to build a good relationship with the supplier, so that they felt they could trust them to work towards the same goal of providing the best quality product possible.\u00a0 In the future this relationship could be beneficial as even more new products are developed because then the company will already have good suppliers they know they can trust and work well with.<\/p>\n

I found this article (https:\/\/www.sdcexec.com\/sourcing-procurement\/article\/12336811\/how-the-supply-chain-can-help-improve-new-product-development-success<\/a>) that specifically talks about the benefits of using the supply chain to help improve the development of new products.\u00a0One thing the article mentions is the importance of including the suppliers in the design process.\u00a0Suppliers can be helpful because they might have different information what kind of supplies that will go into the product, how different processes will work in making the product, etc.\u00a0 By working with the suppliers, possible problems\/kinks in the supply chain can be worked out earlier in the process, which saves time and money.\u00a0 The idea is that with more brain power, the product will be more innovative and profitable.\u00a0In class we talked about the pros and cons of supply chain transparency.\u00a0 While there is a risk in including suppliers in the design process, there are also many benefits that might make the transparency worthwhile.\u00a0 This is especially true if you know you can trust your supplier to uphold their end of the bargain.\u00a0 I find this especially interesting with the development of new products.\u00a0 Do you think there is a point in a product\u2019s life cycle where it makes sense to change the supply chain?\u00a0 For example, after the new product is working well, does it make sense to then change suppliers in order to go with suppliers that are cheaper even if it means the suppliers are further away?\u00a0 Or should you continue to stay with the supplier you know and trust so that you can continue the strengthening the relationship even though it might cost a little more upfront?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last summer I worked with a medical device company based in London as they were finishing up on finalizing their<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3710,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[71166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-planning-sc-locations-integrating-supply-chains"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-03\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}