Impact of product design decisions within product development on the supplier selection process at the automotive industry

Answering the competitive pressure, companies from the field of customer and capital goods significantly reduce their in-house production depth in favor of a higher involvement of suppliers. As a result, a company´s success is dependent of the performance of their supply chain. The selection of suppliers is supported by several methods, which focus on operative decisions, but neglect the influence of product design decisions within development on the selection process. Based on the design decisions, significant areas of the supply chain structure are determined implicitly. The resulting discrepancy between the planned and the actual supply chain structure determination, lead to a limitation of the latitude for the supplier selection. In order to improve the supplier selection process, this paper presents effects of product design decisions on this process.