Title: Exploring the hidden potential of product design to mitigate supply chain risk

Authors: Federica Ciccullo; Margherita Pero; Maria Caridi

Addresses: Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Via Lambruschini 4/b, Milan 20156, Italy ' Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Via Lambruschini 4/b, Milan 20156, Italy ' Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Via Lambruschini 4/b, Milan 20156, Italy

Abstract: Although it is well known that product design affects supply chain management, much less has been written about whether and how product design affects supply chain risk management. This research gap brought us to study the following research questions: which new product development (NPD) practices can mitigate supply chain risk? And how? Based on seven exploratory case studies, we found that four categories of NPD practices, as well as product modularity, are effective supply chain risk mitigation levers. Moreover, we found that the conjoint adoption of NPD practices and product features (i.e. 'bundles') has a synergistic effect on supply chain risk mitigation.

Keywords: mitigation strategies; modularity; product design; product design - supply chain alignment; supply chain risk management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJECRM.2017.086753

International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 2017 Vol.11 No.1, pp.66 - 93

Received: 15 Sep 2016
Accepted: 12 May 2017
Published online: 24 Sep 2017 *

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