Design Chain - Supply Chain - Management

Methodology and process development for integrating Chinese manufacturing capabilities into the Design and Supply Chain of Swiss enterprises.

Motivation

Asia, eminently China is becoming more and more a powerhouse in manufacturing, especially for high-volume, low-cost production. This will lead to an increasing bigger importance of the Asian markets from the procurement and manufacturing perspective for Swiss companies. Cost pressure and competitiveness are forcing more and more Swiss and European enterprises to dislocate their high-volume production to Asia, where labor rates are extremely low. For most Swiss companies, especially the SMEs, the production dislocation to Asia poses some major challenges regarding organizational, ICT-related and IPR-related aspects.

Objectives

The aim of the Design Chain - Supply Chain - Management project (DC-SC-M) is to develop a methodology and processes to integrate Asian manufacturing capabilities into the Design and Supply Chain of Swiss Enterprises to enhance their long-term competitiveness in a sustainable manner.

Partners

• Research partners: ETH-Center for Enterprise Sciences (BWI), Technology and Innovation Management, Zhejiang Advanced Manufacturing Institute of the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
• Industrial partners: maxon motor ag, Mammut Sports Group AG, Mettler-Toledo International Inc., Micronas Semiconductor Holding AG, Micropool GmbH, Pro-Concept Management SA, Schindler Management Ltd., Schindler Aufzüge AG, Schindler Management Ltd., SIG Combibloc International AG
• Financed by CTI (Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation)

Organisation

• Project start: July 10th, 2006
• Duration: 24 months
• The project DC-SC-M ended in July 2008 (final meeting and final report)
• DC-SC-M “get together” meeting was organized on October 1^st, 2009 (ETH Zurich)

Further research activities based on the DC-SC-M project

Project Global TCO: based on the DC-SC-M research activities a CTI project focusing on the determination / calculation of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in the global context started in January 2009 (duration 26 months, finished in 02/2011). For further information about this project, see http://www.globaltco.ethz.ch/

A Sino-Swiss Science and Technology Cooperation (SSSTC) financed project (EG 01-032009) was performed in Sumer 2010 in cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Science & Technology Management / Tongji University (Shanghai) dealing with the power relationship balance of the buyer-supplier-relations (Swiss buyers, Chinese suppliers; Chinese suppliers starting to dominate the relationship due to their growing power and macroeconomic issues). For further information about this SSSTC project please contact Prof. Dr. Robert Alard.