Identifying important risk factors in design for supply chain

The objective of Design for Supply Chain (DFSC) is to design the supply chain for a product in parallel with designing the new product. When designing a new product, companies also need to manage the risks associated with both the product design and the supply chain. The objective of this research is to develop a combination system, namely a DFSC and risk tool. This tool would show companies which product design and supply chain design would yield the highest profitability over the lifetime of the product while investigating tradeoffs between risks, costs and lead times. To determine which risk factors should be included in this tool, a survey was developed and administered to industry experts electronically. This paper shows the process that was used to develop this survey and presents some preliminary results from the survey.