Reducing Time to Market

Purchasing, acting as the liaison between suppliers and engineers, can also help improve product and process designs. For example, companies that involve suppliers early, compared to companies that do not involve suppliers, achieve an average 20 percent improvement on materials costs, material quality, and product development times. Development teams that include suppliers as members also report they receive more improvement suggestions from suppliers than teams that do not involve suppliers. Thus, involving suppliers early in the design process is a way purchasing can begin to add new value and contribute to increasing competitiveness.