Abstract
The practice of technology and product development in most industries today relies upon global engineering networks (GEN) where members of the multifunctional development team come from many locations and organizations. More recently, there has been a clear shift to using development resources from the so called “Emerging Countries” (ECs) that have fast growing domestic markets, large pools of skilled workforce and low labor costs. The integration of resources from ECs, whether from the company’s own businesses there or from external suppliers, poses a new challenge for collaborative work in a GEN. These challenges are described in this chapter. The process of transition to the use of resources from ECs is fraught with business risks. These risks are described together with steps than can be taken to mitigate them. A model, derived based on practice, to manage the transition process is presented. The model is comprised of a set of Foundation elements and location-dependent Transformation processes. This transition model has continued application during the post-transition operational phase of the GEN. The observations and conclusions presented here are supported by four cases studied over the past five years.
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Karandikar, H. (2009). Set-Up and Operation of Global Engineering Networks Spanning Industrialized and Emerging Economies. In: Dekkers, R. (eds) Dispersed Manufacturing Networks. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-468-3_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-468-3_11
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