The design team: suppliers move into the line of fire. (growing importance of suppliers in original equipment manufacturing)(includes related article) (Suppliers - Your Competitive Edge)

Purchasing, November, 1993 by Raia, Ernest

Did the manufacturing renaissance in America begin in the wrong place--namely, the factory floor? That's what Bart Huthwaite, president of the Institute for Competitive Design in Rochester, Mich., believes. According to Huthwaite, factory floor "fixes" cost too much and do too little. Indeed, it has been documented by Ford and others that product design accounts for only 5% of total costs, but can influence up to 85% of the product's total life cycle costs.

"Thus," says Huthwaite, "manufacturing competitiveness must begin with product design." The cure for poor quality, he contends, rests not so much in better process controls but in the "elimination or simplification of that process in the early design stage." The recognition that part and process are...

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