マルチソーシングにおけるサプライヤー間の協力要因

──日本の鉄道車両開発における共同設計の事例研究──

抄録

　In today's dynamic business environment, firms emphasize multi-sourcing as an outsourcing strategy. Generally, firms evaluate suppliers from a multidimensional perspective and accordingly determine whether to opt for single-sourcing or multi-sourcing. Multi-sourcing potentially enables firms to reduce the risks of failure from outsourcing and obtain best-of-breed services and agility.

　Multi-sourcing is quite different from single-sourcing in terms of interdependence between tasks performed by multiple suppliers. The characteristics of multi-sourcing with low interdependence between tasks are similar to single-sourcing. Conversely, it is difficult for firms to encourage multiple suppliers in a competitive relationship to collaborate with each other for multi-sourcing with a high interdependence between tasks. However, previous studies do not pay attention to multi-sourcing with high interdependence, wherein suppliers are required to collaborate with each other.

　In this paper, we study the case of joint development for rolling stock in Japan, in order to clarify the collaborative factors among suppliers in such a setting. We deduce that buyers should encourage multiple suppliers to communicate without buyers’ participation by appointing one supplier who possesses higher knowledge of the concerned product as a lead supplier, and not force multiple sup-pliers to collaborate with each other in such a setting.