Research On The Management Of Supplier Collaboration In The Process Of Complex Product Development

Since entering the21st century, with the immense changes in the macroµ environmentsof the global industry and the intense competition of products, it has become a general consensusthat enterprises reinforce their competition abilities through the development of complex products.Due to huge amounts of components and complicated system architectures, modularizing complexproducts and completing the design and manufacture tasks coordinately by the designers fromdifferent domains has become the main stream of complex product development. Actually, manyenterprises with manufacture outsourcing have a strong desire to be guided by theory of suppliercollaborative management, so that they can improve outsourcing performances and controloutsourcing risks in practice. From existing literatures, there is very limited research oncollaborative management between suppliers and complex products enterprises. Therefore,enhancing the supplier collaborative management in the development process of complex productsand investigating related theories is of great importance in both theory and practice to complexproduct development.Based on the deep analysis of a series of management problems in the development process ofcomplex products, this dissertation systematically investigates the problems of suppliercollaborative. First of all, the collaborative process of supplier involvement in the development ofcomplex products is analyzed. Next, the evaluation system and the selection method of suppliersare explored. Then, the relational model and the allocation model of supplier collaboration areintroduced and elaborated in detail. After that, the main tasks of the supplier collaborativemanagement and the tactics of the promotion of the supplier collaborative ability are studied.Finally, the supplier management practices in the process of complex products development areexplained according to the case study of the supplier selection for the development of a whole-car.The main works and the original points of this dissertation are as follows:(1) The collaborative process of supplier involvement in the development of complex productsis studied. According to the analysis of the dynamic evolution process of the supplier relationshipsin the process of products collaborative development, the collaborative process of supplierinvolvement in the development of complex products is elaborated and modeled. This modelprovides a basis for the evaluation and the selection of suppliers, the construction of the suppliercollaborative relationships, and the management of supplier collaboration.(2) The evaluation and the selection methods of suppliers are introduced. Firstly, the supplier evaluation system is constructed, which combines with the features of the development process ofcomplex products. The multi-attribute model based on the BOCR evaluation system and D-S(Dempster-Shafer) theory is used to evaluate suppliers. The supplier selection model based on thefuzzy compromise programming algorithm is then devised which considers the balance ofnumerous factors and targets.(3) The construction of supplier collaborative relationships is studied. The problem of theconstruction of supplier collaborative relationships is researched form two aspects, which are theallocation model construction and the allocation method of supplier collaboration. Suppliercollaborative relationships are analyzed in three levels (strategy, tactics and skill) from the angle ofmanagement. The supplier collaborative relationship models are constructed according to the twopatterns of center-collaboration and level-collaboration. The supplier allocation models areconstructed in different levels with the consideration of the features of complex productdevelopment and the evolution of collaborative relationships. A group decision-making methodconsidering the relevance of experts and attributes is devised to select the allocation scheme ofsupplier collaboration. The selection process is provided and the rationalities of the selectionmethod and the selection process are verified with cases.(4) The management of supplier collaborative process is researched with the focus on thequality management and the cost control in the process of supplier collaboration. In the respect ofquality management, the risk of supplier quality management is evaluated with the method ofAdvance Product Quality Planning (APQP). In the respect of cost control, the cost managementsystem of supplier collaboration is developed, which uses the methods of Value Engineering andActivity-Based Cost to control and estimate the costs in the process of the development of complexproducts. Moreover, the tactics and methods for promoting the performances of collaborationbetween suppliers and enterprises are offered form the perspective of supplier evaluation andinprovement.(5) The case of supplier management in the process of the development of a whole-car isstudied based on a real enterprise. The construction and optimization of the supply-platform areachieved from the aspects of supplier performance evaluation and ability promotion. Themanagement in the process of supplier collaboration is realized through the approval proceduressuch as OTS (Off Tooling Sample) and PPAP (Production Part Approval Process).