Sunday, May 1 2005 16:31 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: In a survey conducted by Infosys, an overwhelming majority (70 percent) of supply chain executives confirmed that managing global supply chain is the single biggest challenge in product development for the hi-tech industry.

The survey was conducted at the Electronics Supply Chain Association (ESCA) Spring 2005 Symposium.

The event saw participation by 170 supply chain executives from 89 leading companies spanning the semiconductor industry, original equipment manufacturers, software vendors, distributors, and electronic manufacturing service providers, a company statement said.

The survey also confirmed that time-to-market is critical in new product introductions (43 per cent), more so than quality of design (eight per cent) or product differentiation (34 per cent), it said.

Results show a strong indication from supply chain executives that in rapidly changing market, companies are willing to tradeoff optimisation of product features, performance, cost and reliability, primarily because modular versions of the product are introduced or subsequent releases as newer technologies develop, the release said.

The survey findings also revealed collaboration amongst design partners, suppliers, and customers is the key element of effective and integrated product management and in the current new product development process the collaboration environment is sub-optimal.

In addition, the release said, the majority also indicated marketing and sales as well as engineering were the primary influencers during the new product development phase.