Breaking Down Barriers Between Engineering And Supply Chain Is Good For Business

As a leader of a fast-growing company, I’m constantly thinking about ways to improve our operational efficiency and to help our customers do the same. And it’s more apparent than ever that a major key to improving manufacturing operations is optimizing supply chain performance — the top business priority for business leaders in 2022 is improving manufacturing and supply chain visibility, after all.

While there are plenty of external factors beyond our control creating headwinds (inflation, rising interest rates, and the pandemic’s ripple effects), what every organization can control and improve is its quality of communication and workflow.

I’m a firm believer in the power of collaboration to make teams and companies more efficient, and forging strong collaborative relationships requires effective communication and workflow. And in the world of manufacturing, the collaboration (or lack thereof) between engineering and supply chain teams has a massive impact on operational efficiency and the bottom line.

New product development (NPD) and production run smoothly when engineering and supply chain teams are aligned and integrated into the same workflow. But in many organizations, those two teams operate with different goals.

When Engineering and Supply Chain Aren’t On the Same Page

In NPD, engineering teams are tasked with creating new, quality products and getting them to market ASAP. Meanwhile, the supply chain team is primarily focused on hitting financial targets and reducing risk with fluctuating volume targets.

These divergent goals can make it difficult for engineers and supply chain managers to get on the same page for part sourcing in NPD and to work together to hit shared business objectives (i.e. getting quality products to market at a rapid clip). And a failure to collaborate not only has an adverse effect on lead times but also creates drag in the development process that hinders desired outcomes.

Barriers grow as poor communication leads to wasted time and effort for both teams, whether it’s engineers chasing down order updates, buyers stressed out over a lack of visibility into engineering activity, team members placing duplicate orders out of ignorance, or any number of other issues. And those problems don’t account for the (also very real) opportunity cost of personnel having to task-switch out of their more important work to deal with procurement issues instead (most engineers spend 10% or more of their time on part procurement).

The lack of visibility for all parties in part procurement is especially challenging in the context of low-volume custom part sourcing for prototype applications. Supply chain personnel are rightly focused on existing product lines and large-scale sourcing where every cent adds up. So, NPD procurement suffers, and when engineers are left to their own devices sourcing parts, it adds complexity and confusion to the process.

One Team, One Dream

Now picture the perfect sourcing workflow: a single location that every interested party, across engineering and supply chain functions, can access on-demand with updated design, purchasing, quality, and tracking information for every order. Just imagine what that would allow you to do — faster design iterations, faster time-to-market, and generally happier and more productive staff. It sounds like (a very profitable) heaven, right?

You can make it real, starting with removing the barrier between engineers and supply chain pros. Ditch the separate-teams-with-different-goals approach and reframe everyone’s responsibilities and goals so that they operate like a single product team. A product team where engineering and supply chain work together in service of one goal — launching products that solve customer problems in cost-effective ways.

When you see the players on a soccer (née football) team warming up before kickoff, you don’t know who plays midfield or center back. You just know that everyone in a jersey will play their role and work together to win. It’s time to help your engineers and supply chain pros remember that they’re all on the same side, working together toward a common goal. Do that, then give them the space and tools to enable the aforementioned perfect procurement workflow, and you’ve got a product development dream team.

It’s a winning combination.