These are all-important activities that facilitate the early involvement of suppliers. The activities also help to keep many of the ‘‘business issues’’ in supplier relation- ships on track, while allowing the technical people to work with suppliers on design and development issues. The activities undertaken to achieve target cost goals vary from fairly minimal to extensive efforts. The less extensive efforts include using factual data to negotiate with suppliers and sharing long-term strategies to gain supplier cooperation. Other methods used to achieve target cost—such as feature trade-off, changing specifications, changing materials and changing design are much more extensive and have broader implications. These efforts generally require team coordination and close working relationships among supply management, design/R&D, manufacturing, and possibly marketing, and are critical if any feature performance or appearance is to be changed. The firms studied indicate that if the desired target cost was not achieved, they may cancel
or delay the project.
All the organizations observed involve suppliers very early in the new product/service development process, during the concept/discovery phase, or during very early specification development. All indicate they will incorporate a supplier’s new technology into design when the supplier’s new technology is superior to their own. They may also seek out suppliers offering new technology or collaborate with suppliers on technology development. Utilization of supplier technology helps explain why these organizations involve their suppliers early, while the design is still fluid. Similarly, every one of the organizations indicates that they work with their key suppliers to help them improve performance in order to meet target cost goals. Suppliers also participate in the design for materials and design for production processes.
The results of this study have implications for the
development of target costing systems. First, it is important to understand the contribution that supply management involvement can make to the target costing process. Purchasing involvement is important to the extent that supplier involvement is important. Purchasing plays a crucial role in identifying, qualifying and beginning the negotiation/target cost discussion with suppliers early in the process, when it is easiest to make modifications.