Collaborative Enterprise Sourcing

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Collaborative Enterprise Sourcing (CES) is an innovative concept in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).

[edit] Product Life cycle

Any entity, be it a business, manufactured good or a software application, has a lifecycle. The typical phases of a Lifecycle include:

  • Conception
  • Design
  • Manufacturing or Fabrication
  • Service or Maintenance
  • Disposal or Obsolescence

In manufacturing businesses across the Aerospace, Automotive, Shipbuilding and Consumer Goods industries, managing data and information about products fabricated in an enterprise is crucial to achieving common business objectives of low production cost and lesser product development cycle time.

[edit] Interaction of phases

In a typical industry scenario, the Design and Service phases in the Product Lifecycle have to work very closely with the process of "Buying" or "Procurement" of raw materials, parts, components and tools. The time lag between the end of the Design phase and the beginning of the Manufacturing phase involves the process of "Sourcing". The "Sourcing" process consists of iterative negotiations between the Design team and the Sourcing department in a manufacturing enterprise. An attempt is made to strike a perfect balance between the "Design For Supply" and "Supply For Design" approaches. This takes up to 30% of the entire product development cycle time and can be a crucial factor for the success of any manufacturing business, especially when a new product is being introduced into the market.

Collaborative Enterprise Sourcing (CES) is an attempt to completely eliminate the repetitve, time-consuming negotiations between Design and Sourcing teams. This is done by providing fully immersive, cross-functional comprehensive sourcing capabilities right at a Design Engineers desk.

[edit] Advantages

Though the pre-requisite here is a merger of the Sourcing and Design teams, the concept empowers an enterprise with the following advantages:

  • Lesser Time-to-Market
  • Production Cost Optimization
  • Improved Product Quality
  • Better Re-use of Engineering and Sourcing Data
  • A seamless integration of all phases in a product's lifecycle that involve Sourcing, enabling better collaboration and faster decision-making.