Assessing a project team's ability to co-design with suppliers

Purpose - It is now acknowledged that Early Supplier Involvement (ESI) in product development confers a competitive advantage. However, the implementation of ESI has been further extended to consider successful product development, particularly through the Relationship Assessment Programme (RAP) model (Lamming et al., 1996), as an interactive process between a customer firm and a supplier. We adopt this point of view in our paper aiming at shaping the outline of customer's ability to co-design with suppliers in New Product Development (NPD). Design/methodology/approach - We adopted an action research approach based on longstanding interactions between researchers and of six French industrial manufacturers for the co-construction of local knowledge which can finally serve to build generic actionable knowledge. The feedback provided by a case application of the tool in one industrial setting is described. Findings - We introduce two dimensions to specify the customer's ability to co-design with suppliers: Open-mindedness and Capability. We propose a self audit tool based on a maturity grid approach to assess, via both these dimensions, the ability of a project team to successfully set up and manage the co-development project with suppliers. Originality/value - Although Early Supplier Involvement has emerged in previously published studies as critical factor in improving performance in Product Development, the unit of analysis is often the supplier in terms of selection and interaction processes. In this context, the absorptive ability of the customer's project team has not been examined. Further, we propose a structured method to assess this ability and an associated tool empirically tested. Practical implications - This tool will serve as a basis for defining the continuous improvement strategy needed to guarantee the success of the collaboration