Study On The Early Purchasing Involvement In The New Product Development In ZS Company

Domestic servers have developed rapidly in recent years,but competition has also become increasingly fierce.In order to seize market share and expand sales,domestic server manufacturers have to face the cruel crisis of price competition and profits declining while increasing the investment.In addition,due to long development cycle of new products and high funding pressure on R&D investment,enterprises are facing the double challenges from external competition and internal pressure of investment requirement and cost reduction,especially for small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs).It has become a major problem which needs to be solved that how to make the enterprises more competitive,how to improve R&D quality while reduce R&D and production cost,how to develop high value innovative products,how to maintain the sustainable innovation development of enterprises.The importance of R&D purchasing has been confirmed by the theoretical research and practice on the early purchasing involvement in the new product development(EPI)at home and abroad.However,while the general theories and strategies of EPI introduced into a specific company for practice,it shows that it has less operability,not only because of the differences of industry,products,market position,capital scale,management system and philosophy of the companies,but also the different operation processes and status of the companies.This paper focuses on the early purchasing involvement in the new product development of ZS Company.Firstly,the relevant literatures and theories have been studied,sorted and summarized,and the effect of EPI has been identified.It has also been found that in the relevant literatures,domestic and foreign scholars are more focused on early supplier involvement in new product development(ESI),such as the driving factors,incentives,performance impact of early supplier involvement,supplier selection and evaluation,etc.,relatively few focused on EPI,more few on the strategy of EPI which is designed based on the actual situation of the SMEs.Secondly,the product structure,material characteristics,R&D process,etc.of ZS have been decomposed and analyzed in detail,and the relevant data have been sorted out for finding out some main problems in the current new product development area,such as material selection issues,design feasibility problems,supplier matching issues,purchasing lead time issues,etc.And then the paper has explored the main causes of these problems.Finally,according to the characteristics of ZS company,such as small purchase demand,high technology uncertainty in new product development,frequent changes of BOM,and high technical support requirements,this paper has studied several main aspects of the strategies of early purchasing involvement in new product development for ZS,for example,improving the professional knowledge and skill level of purchasing personnel through internal training and early involvement in new product development;strengthening the information exchange in the process of developing new products;formulating the selection specification to guide the materials selection for R&D personnel;introducing early suppliers participation in new product development;and developing special supplier selection and management strategy for new products development,etc.In summary,by the research and discussion on the company's products and the R&D process combining the current situation of ZS company,the purpose of this paper is to help ZS to identify the main problems in R&D and purchasing in new product development,conduct an in-depth analysis and study to find some solutions which are suitable for ZS.It is expected that EPI can help R&D personnel to foresee or identify problems in the early stages of new product development,avoid problems occurred after design,reduce iterative design and modification;to improve the manufacturability and assemblability of the design of subcontracted parts by introducing early suppliers involvement in new product development,and reduce the time required to modify the drawings again and again after design completed.These strategies are not only expected to improve the efficiency of new product development,shorten the new product development cycle,reduce the costs of new product development and purchasing,but indirectly enable the company to gain market advantages and enhance the competitiveness of ZS's products.