Walks on West Cliff
Enhancing Supplier Collaboration (“Shifting Left”) to Thrive in a Time of Global Disruption
On a recent walk on West Cliff with Robert Shinno, a Sr. Enterprise Account Executive at Aras Corporation, he shared insights on how supplier collaboration is becoming a defining factor in product success. The need to “shift-left” , ie. engaging suppliers earlier in design and manufacturing is no longer optional.
5 Trends Shaping Supplier Collaboration:
- Shortening design to manufacturing cycles by leveraging DFX and supplier collaboration earlier in the development process.
- Real time tracking of supplier quality through defect rates and feedback loops to enhance next generation designs.
- Sustainability and regulatory reporting are increasingly expected — both from regulators and from customers.
- Advances in AI and GenAI are enabling teams to spot correlations in vast datasets, helping to optimize decision-making across supply chains.
- Secure, timely data sharing and integrated workflows between design, procurement, quality, and suppliers help to reduce errors and accelerate product launches.
Why it matters:
Global supply chains continue to face disruption from tariffs, pandemics, environmental events, logistics breakdowns, and increasing regulatory demands. When collaboration is delayed until too late in the cycle, the cost of design changes, rework, and missed compliance grows exponentially.
At the end of the day, success depends on having a single source of truth across the product lifecycle using a PLM System. This ensures that suppliers, OEMs, and operations teams are aligned with the right data at the right time in an automated and integrated way between systems.
In an era of accelerating innovation and increasing complexity, companies that build stronger, more transparent supplier collaboration practices will be best positioned to adapt quickly and scale successfully.
If your team is navigating the challenges of supply chains, then PRG can help you build resilience and agility into your operations. Let’s talk about your next milestone.
