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

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.