Inter-organizational concurrent engineering: A case study in PCB manufacturing

Concurrent Engineering (CE) is mostly applied within an organization. Due to the focus at core competencies, suppliers need to be involved. Focusing on core competencies requires manufacturers to involve suppliers in the development of complex products, especially in electronic design. Consequently, an inter-organizational approach is necessary to reduce throughput-time, improve quality, and lower costs. Analysis of a European PCB supplier's difficulties in implementing CE, with the Readiness Assessment for Concurrent Engineering (RACE), led to a maturity model for supplier involvement in electronic design. This framework's first step is effectuation of basic CE principles within the organization, which has been recommended for the PCB supplier. Further progress requires customer involvement, ultimately leading to virtual customer-supplier-teams striving end-user satisfaction, supported by enhanced, ethernet-based application tools. The lack of customer effort, to achieve inter-Organizational CE, proved to be the major road-block for the PCB supplier. Nevertheless, suppliers have a strong competitive edge, since they are capable of entering customer-supplier-networks can therewith be established instantaneously.