The debate over the merits and risks of outsourcing are ongoing, but outsourcing remains a widely used business strategy. We have seen a lot of healthy discussion on how we should/could protect Intellectual Property (IP) in the context of outsourcing, but we have not seen much discussion on the effects of outsourcing on Concurrent Engineering. Industry was making great progress on Concurrent Engineering and Design-for-Manufacturing 10-15 years ago, but we might have taken some steps backwards in recent years as a natural result of the increase in outsourced manufacturing processes.
Concurrent Engineering efforts were bringing together product designers, manufacturing and quality engineers into a collaborative process. Instead, we are back to throwing the design over the wall, except the wall has moved further away. The “wall” used to be between our engineering and manufacturing departments; it is now between our product design organization and our contract manufacturers.
Are we trading off efficiencies in design and manufacturing for the benefits of cheaper labor? We might be getting better overall results anyway, but we could also be missing opportunities for more radical breakthrough improvements—improvements that could only be achieved when product designers and manufacturing engineers work closely together.
We could increase involvement from suppliers in the design process, but we are also asking suppliers to compete and bid for the manufacturing work. How much are suppliers willing to share when they are bidding on a project? Perhaps they don’t want to give up their “secret sauce”. Yes, IP is not limited to the product design! The manufacturing processes can have IP themselves. In fact, to further complicate the matter, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) requires companies working on DoD projects to not only protect the IP of certain product designs related to U.S. Defense, but also certain manufacturing processes that are deemed to be technologies the government does not want in the hands of certain countries.
Was Concurrent Engineering overrated anyway? Are new manufacturing technologies like 3D printing making the topic obsolete? Or should we be trying to develop more of that “secret sauce” manufacturing for our companies? Please join in and share your thoughts on this topic.
Interesting thoughts. I wonder also, how much is 'lost in translation' between throwing designs over the wall. It seems the struggle will remain what is designed vs. what is most practical to manufacture. The believe the 3D printing will affect the use of concurrent engineering, but will never replace it.
Posted by: Becky | March 27, 2013 at 03:39 PM