Output details

Benefits of aligning design and supply chain management

This peer reviewed journal brings together a multi-disciplinary research team from Milan and Birmingham in order to focus on two issues: (1) identify the gaps in existing scientific literature in terms of understanding misalignment issues between design and supply chain management; and (2) to highlight the current failure to widely adopt in an integrated way both supply chain management (SCM) tools and processes in front end design activities and design-intensive activities in SCM domain.

This paper contributes to new knowledge by highlighting current miss-alignments and by providing a series of empirical based case study examples on how effective alignment between design and supply chain management can facilitate the discovery of new design opportunities advocated by Handfield and Lawson (2007).

It develops a novel framework for aligning design and supply chain management activities based around four key activities: (1) Listening for innovation opportunities (identifying supply chain capabilities and design needs); (2) Looking for innovation opportunities (identifying new and unused SC capabilities to generate new design possibilities); (3) Communicating innovation requirements/operational constraints and limitations earlier in the process; and (4) Encouraging new innovation efforts (connecting supply chain capabilities and design needs).

Its originality lies in the identification that “design is acting as an enabler” to align supply chain capabilities to fulfil design needs and identify untapped supply chain competencies to create new product opportunities.

This work differentiates itself by bringing together effective practices from design and supply chain management disciplines into a novel framework for aligning design and SCM in order to unlock design opportunities.

A key impact has been the creation a multi-disciplinary research group between Milan and Birmingham, underpinned by industry support from UK and Italy manufacturing companies, that has fostered additional conference papers, post-graduate student exchanges and joint early career researcher activities.