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Author:

Dandache, Moustapha Rakan; Bocquet, Jean Claude

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Abstract:

Industrial firms are recently turning to outsourcing design. Unlike in manufacturing the context in design is characterized by a lot of uncertainty. Technology and knowledge are critical when considering outsourcing in design. The firm's competitive advantage is subject to information leakage and loss of internal knowledge. The relationship between outsourcing and supplier firm is more complex due to human factors and innovation activities. Moreover outsourcing determinants in design must not be considered to be the same as in manufacturing. We focus in this paper on outsourcing in design phase and its interaction with other phases. We propose a general design outsourcing process in order to address the outsourcing question. The process approach will allow coordinating elements of the outsourcing problem (Make or Buy decision, supplier selection?) in a more complete manner thus covering all firm?s activities that can impact outsourcing. We expand our process on two axes. The first covers all the impacts of outsourcing during the life cycle of the product using horizontal processes. The second is internal to the design phase and allows alignment of strategic and operational issues.

Keywords:

design outsourcing, systems engineering, development process