1、中文 3070字 标题： Making supply chain design the rational differentiating characteristic of the OEMs 原文： The ownership of the parts manufacturers was consequently fused together into new global companies with significant technological and innovation capabilities. At the same time, the OEMs divested their
2、 components and sub-systems divisions in an effort to tap into the non-OEM automotive markets. These developments intensified the OEMs move to outsource the bulk of the manufacturing and design of the subsystems and components to their suppliers and, in effect, lost most of their manufacturing stren
3、gth and bargaining power to them； the suppliers currently account for 28% of the total automotive industry profits as opposed to only 24% for the OEMs. The outsourcing trend has thus resulted in OEMs relinquishing their historical strategic role and to position themselves more like original brand ma
4、nufacturers (OBMs). These trends have contributed to an accelerated increase of the supply uncertainty in addition to the already recognized demand uncertainty. Various supply uncertainty reduction strategies have been designed in order to stabilize the planning process among which the most signific
5、ant is the design collaboration which includes the sharing of NPI plans and even a joint NPI plans design. As the components and sub-systems are being outsourced, and the suppliers are leveraging the innovation and technological costs across OEMs, industry SC structure has also evolved into an extre
6、mely complex and intricate network in which all suppliers tend to have short-term relations with multiple OEMs. The result: any difference in quality, performance, safety, fuel efficiency, and amenities has been reduced significantly. The OEMs, in many ways, have historically been treating SC design
7、 as atactical issue separate from concurrently designing the product and manufacturing process: after the concept design phase, the Purchasing Department would start continuous quest for the lowest cost components by establishing an optimum between the capacity and production costs, location of the
8、suppliers facility, and ransportation and logistics costs (Financial Times 2005). Chain performance would thus be measured in oversimplified and sometimes counterproductive (cost reduction-based) terms. However, the performance measures that emphasize mainly costs distort the way in which the chain
9、members reach key decisions concerning which customers are the most important and therefore the most profitable to serve. The fundamental problem of cost-centric measures is its focus on individual costs minimization rather than on the maximization of value to end customers (see e.g. Simaputang and
10、Sridharan (2002) for details on the advantages of collaboration and cooperation in SCM). While the cost-centric measures might still be acceptable for components with low strategic importance, low customer visibility and low clock speed (e.g. nuts and bolts), they are far less appropriate for those
11、with high clock speed. The lessons learned from fast moving industries (such as Dell, Nike and Li & Fung) teach us that the companies that have successfully outsourced their manufacturing in order to lower their costs and increase their flexibility concomitantly created extremely valuable SC control
12、s that led them to remain the dominant player of the SC. This in turn has permitted these companies to further differentiate themselves from their competitors and has allowed them to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. Not following the strategy of implementing SC controls, on the other ha
13、nd, has severely limited the ability of the OEMs to make the fundamental SC design and synchronization decision and has ultimately caused them to lose their role as integrators within the value chain. To maintain their role as value chain integrators, the OEMs should put more emphasis on the restruc
14、turing of their existing SC； the industry has to shift its differentiation focus into the realm of SC design and synchronization. This implies that the supplier selection decisions should be guided not only by operational factors but also by strategic factors such as flexibility, the capacity to inn
15、ovate, and the suppliers business-technology alignment. When the development of the SC becomes integral to the NPI process, then the suppliers responsibilities at different stages of product and process designs could be clearly acknowledged depending on the strategic importance and the clock speed o
16、f different components and sub-systems. In fact, in our opinion, the design of the SC links that precede the final assembly should be considered as the rational differentiating characteristic of the OEMs from an operational point of view (agility, innovation, quality and reliability). Styling, an di
17、stribution channel design and management (the post-OEM assembly operations)are the emotional differentiating characteristics from a brand perspective. Classifying components based on their clock speed The barriers to clock speed, the dampeners, are the complexity of the product architecture and the
18、organizational inertia of the OEMs. The up-stream rates of technological innovation, which are dictated by the customer demands and the industry competitiveness, are accelerating as they cascade down the supply chain. In order to capitalize on this down-stream acceleration, the OEMs have to modulari
19、ze their products architecture. As mentioned, there are different clock speeds for different auto sub-systems and components. To illustrate, we can consider 10 of a vehicles most representative components. The sheet metal and the hardware (screws, bolts, nuts, rivets, etc.) have the lowest clock spe
20、ed because these components rate of change and innovation is relatively low. Sheet metal and automotive hardware is produced in large-scale manufacturing facilities with very little flexibility. The engineering efforts are focused on efficiency and optimization of processes and not on new product de
21、sign. At the concept design stage all the product and process characteristics are well known and can be easily planned for. To a lesser extent, the same is valid for glass and other automotive construction materials such as steel, aluminium, rubber and plastic The non-functional structural components like the frames, sub-frames, rear axels, suspension components and the seats are located in the middle of the scale.
