Product design has the potential to influence the supply chain in a variety of ways, most notably by lowering costs, ensuring resilience, improving agility, and encouraging sustainability.
From the COVID-19 pandemic and the shipping container predicament to a crisis in the energy markets and food shortages, breakdowns in the global supply chain have been dominating international conversations. Last year, the American Dialect Society announced that “supply chain” had been voted as the financial phrase of the year because it was such a hot topic. With inflation spiraling, a recession looming, and growing complexity in the sourcing of raw materials, it seems unlikely that supply chain shocks will go away any time soon unless serious changes are made.
Can intentional product design ensure a more sustainable supply chain?
Product designers know that complex designs make issues such as responsible sourcing especially challenging while simplifying eases the difficulty. This opens the tantalizing possibility that streamlining product design might be the key to simplifying the whole supply chain.
As a priority, it’s worth examining how the raw materials landscape has become so complicated and exploring the best way forward. For instance, telcos can recycle copper for cables, but the automotive industry is vulnerable to a breakdown in supply because it still relies on precious metals for batteries. In the future, the automotive industry will be able to create a more sustainable supply chain for batteries because old ones will be able to be recycled.
How can modular product design contribute to supply chain resilience?
Modular design divides the product into different modules. It’s about building interfaces where you can change one aspect of a module without transforming the whole product. It enables the supply chain to separate the production process into parts that can be completed in different orders or locations. If you need to change a supplier for a specific module, you can isolate that part of the process without putting the entire chain at risk. Replicating this approach across the supply chain increases resilience, along with the ability to cope in a crisis—meaning there’s less susceptibility to shocks.
Complexity versus simplification
There are two areas where product design can reduce complexity:
Focusing on specifications. More than 60 percent of monopoly situations are self-imposed because the company that designed the product is relying on one supplier to fulfill a particular specification. Redesign, and you can reimagine the supply chain—reducing complexity. For instance, BT changed one manufacturing supplier and lowered costs by about 80 percent.
Capitalizing on technology. Technology such as 3D printing can create flexibility. Agility can also be enhanced by reducing supply chain complexity both externally, through partners and networks, and internally, within a company across departments. Education and training are also vital to empower the workforce by making sure they have the right skills, understand their roles, and feel inspired to take on issues such as sustainability.
If the supply chain can be reimagined with an eye on costs, agility, and sustainability, product design could be the key to resilience.
This article is part of a series created from the content discussed at the 2023 Future of Design summit. The discussion featured Cyril Pourrat, chief procurement officer for BT, and Dominik Leisinger, partner with Kearney. The moderator was Michael Strohmer, senior partner and global co-head of strategic operations at Kearney.
Held at Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, this annual event was attended by design and operations leaders from some of the world’s most innovative companies to imagine what’s next in product design.
