Chapter 2

Make Versus Buy

Once there is a fair idea of what the overall material requirements are going to be, as well as of the supplier landscape, one can now move to the next level of questions. Surely some piece of this new product being invented can be made by someone else. After all, if the items presently being purchased are not already being made, then the R&D program would basically be at a standstill. Is there a way that we could get some of these suppliers to make the whole thing? Typical questions for this line of thinking include: “With the scope of our project, suppliers should be knocking at the door to help us out, and we ought to be able to farm out all of it”; “Why can’t we do this elsewhere?”; “We need to keep our costs down ...

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