Partnership
Available in: Dutch
& English
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The industrial world is very much in a state of turmoil because it is
subject to rapid social change and technological developments. Some of
its salient issues are the shortening of product life cycles driven by
technological progress and quality demands by the customer, which makes
it more and more imperative to efficiently manage the development, implementation
and market introduction of products. Additionally internationalization
and globalization of markets increase the need for competitiveness even
more. Because of these changes and developments, organizations will come
under even greater pressure with regard to -among other things- orientation,
performance and management. This causes that the well-known and most accepted
information and communication patterns in their various forms are no longer
an adequate answer to profitable performance because of habit, culture
and hierarchy.
Many industrial enterprises have chosen to return to the ‘core
business’ in
order to keep doing what they do best. As a consequence, they buy and contract
more, so that the dependence of the supplier grows. Companies will, therefore,
pay more attention and energy to the process of supply. In addition to the care
for timely supply by the supplier and securing the quality of the product and
the process, it also implies more attention to the technological competitive
power of the supplier. The latter in particular demands essentially other structures
and connections than before.
The markets are dynamic and make high demands on products and services.
Technology enables many, quick changes of products.
Therefore, one is emphatically looking for suitable forms of cooperation
in which the participating entities, conscious of the mutual interest,
are combining their efforts in their most competitive activities
and know-how. Economic reasons for these forms of cooperation are
spreading risks and securing leadership by specialization.
One of the forms of cooperation which is very often discussed and
for which the expectations for the future are pitched high, is the partnership
relation:
a form of cooperation between a client and a supplier. With such
forms of cooperation the individual companies increasingly supply
process quality (fine-tuning, matching procedures, technological
know-how, etc.) apart from product quality (innovative, creative, and
constructive, whatever the customer perceives as quality). The increasing
pressure on clients conveys pressure to their many suppliers.
When engaging these forms of cooperation between client and supplier,
the need for ‘external cooperation’ (cooperation and control beyond the borders
of the company) seems to start playing an increasingly important and essential
role. Managing these relations of cooperation should, besides having attention
for the quality of one’s own primary process, especially be focused on
the quality of fine-tuning to the primary process of the ‘partner’.