Product development's biggest challenge — SCM management

NEW DELHI: Global supply chain management has been identified as the single biggest challenge in hi-tech product development. In a survey conducted by Infosys at the Electronics Supply Chain Association (ESCA) Spring 2005 Symposium, an overwhelming majority (70 percent) of supply chain executives confirmed that managing global supply chain is the single biggest challenge in product development for the hi-tech industry. The event saw participation by 170 supply chain executives from 89 leading companies spanning the semiconductor industry, original equipment manufacturers, software vendors, distributors, and electronic manufacturing service providers.






The survey also confirmed that time-to-market is critical in new product introductions (43 percent), more so than quality of design (eight percent) or product differentiation (34 percent). According to the company, results show a strong indication from supply chain executives that in a rapidly changing market, companies are willing to tradeoff optimization of product features, performance, cost and reliability, primarily because modular versions of the product are introduced on subsequent releases as newer technologies develop.





The survey findings also revealed collaboration amongst design partners, suppliers, and customers is the key element of effective and integrated product management and in the current new product development process the collaboration environment is sub-optimal.





In addition, the majority also indicated marketing and sales as well as engineering were the primary influencers during the new product development phase. Manufacturing received only three percent of the votes, showing a strong disconnect between the perceptions of the roles played by the design and manufacturing functions.