A Platform-Based OEM-Supplier Collaboration Ecosystem Development

Innovative products and services are key success factors for the manufacturing industry. Development of such products and services usually takes place in partnerships in which the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) distributes the development of new products to many locations in several countries across the world. Suppliers, especially first-tier suppliers (FTSs) are involved in the development process as early as possible, because they have knowledge that is strategically important for developing the new product and services. Historically, the OEM-supplier relationship is characterized by a sequential interaction whereby the OEM gives product and production requirements to the supplier and the supplier delivers his product or service to the OEM. However, collaboration between FTS and OEM is essential to fruitfully use the knowledge of the FTS, anticipate potential downstream errors, and reduce costs and risks. The paper presents recent developments in this part of the supply chain with particular attention to the design of a shared platforms, which is part of an OEM-supplier ecosystem. The development process of such an ecosystem can be seen as a transdisciplinary engineering process, because not only IT engineers are needed to build such a platform-base ecosystem but also people with knowledge of supply chain organization and coordination, especially in product development processes.