Research On Quality Control Model For R&D Purchasing In Manufacturing Enterprises

As the logistics interface between R&D and the external, R&D materials not only provide external supply resources and technical information for manufacturing enterprises and its quality control level also have great effect on the project’s overall performance, the quality of materials during the production and the cost of finished products. However, the quality control of such activities has not got great concern. Due to the R&D materials are always purchased with low frequency, small batch and high uncertainty, it is difficult for the existing methods of quality control to effectively coordinate the R&D-dominant enterprises and suppliers to jointly improve the R&D performance. In order to make R&D purchasing better meet the material requirements in the process of R&D and to cover the shortages of traditional scientific management and operation management mode in planning R&D purchasing, this paper focuses on the integration of key technologies at planning and implementation levels and builds the system model satisfying both internal and external constraints, from the perspectives of internal optimization and synergetic improvement of supply chain. Specifically, the main contents include the following aspects:First, in order to observe the operation status of R&D purchasing in enterprise management, this paper analyzes the current situation and requirements of the quality control in China’s manufacturing enterprises’R&D purchasing and studies the patterns, activities and characteristics of the manufacturing’s R&D purchasing through surveys on the manufacturing enterprises in various economic types and scales. In the process of data collection, the author applies grounded theory and content analysis to define the connotation and extension of R&D purchasing and uses canonical analysis to extract the main category to compare the differences of quality controls in manufacturing’s R&D purchasing and ordinary purchasing. The questionnaire is designed in three dimensions-the importance degree of cognition, the achievement degree of activity and the actual effect. Through analyzing the distribution of the findings in three-dimensional matrix, the critical control points of the quality control activity of R&D purchasing are extracted and then the quality control models of R&D purchasing are established separately.Second, as a kind of special supply activity, the process of R&D purchasing involves more than one participant and the distribution of the corresponding quality power and the strategy selection during the operation will lead to the changes of the relationship between individual and organization and make the process of R&D purchasing be characterized with network structure. The method of social network analysis has been confirmed that it can be used to better reveal the interaction between participants in the supply chain. Based on the general two-dimensional network structure, this paper displays the regulatory relations of project, department and supply chain three levels in three-dimensional diagram to show the stereoscopic relevance and reveals the balance mechanism of quality power under different modes of R&D purchasing by comparing many cases. After that, the author quantifies the effect on the balance relations of participants that might be caused if enterprises adjust the distribution of quality power during the management, so as to obtain the strategy set including the results of objective analysis.Third, since R&D materials require different types and the corresponding technical requirements are different, the supplier evaluation system, which is the same as batch purchasing, could not be used to reasonably meet the R&D’s material requirements with high uncertainty. Start with the characteristics of R&D’s material requirements, this paper divides the R&D suppliers into class Ⅰ and class Ⅱ and designs evaluation indexes and methods respectively by comparing with the original evaluation emphasis of the suppliers of batch materials. By analyzing the changes of evaluation criteria for the supplier, it shows that the supplier evaluation system, which satisfies the new requirements of the quality control of R&D purchasing, should not only consider the supplier’s visible resources (usually tangible, static, directly measurable resources), but also considers the invisible resources (usually intangible, dynamic, indirectly measurable and value-created resources), which are related to the supplier’s innovation ability. To make the established supplier evaluation procedure and regulations in enterprise continue to work in selecting R&D supplier, for the suppliers in class Ⅰ, the general index system is properly adjusted to provide necessary evaluation information input and under the constrains of purchase cost and the R&D’s matching effect, the bi-level programming model based on entropy coefficient is used to seek for the optimal solution for distributing the purchasing. For the suppliers in class Ⅱ, to improve the response degree of the supplier evaluation to the design requirements, the author establishes the fuzzy evaluation model of extend house of quality and directly takes the design requirements from R&D group as the input of the house of quality. Then the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation algorithm is applied to allow the decision-making group to use natural linguistic variables to evaluate the supplier and the proper design scheme of supply chain is determined when outputting the evaluation results of the feature requirements of key materials, so as to make the design requirements turn into the sorted result of suppliers and to make sure that the selecting process of the supplier fully meets the material requirements, which is derived from customer demands.Fourth, since the members in supply chain have different interests, the other members in supply chain make different efforts to R&D materials depending on the existing supply chain contracts. Facing the supply requirements of R&D materials with uncertain demands and asymmetric information, the participant’s irrational decision-making can lead to vicious gambling. Therefore, it is necessary to design a quality contract that can simultaneously coordinate the participant’s bounded-rationality constraint and incentive-compatibility constraint. Through analyzing the structural features of the supply chain of R&D purchasing and summarizing the decision-making obstacles for members in keeping the cooperative relations, it can be found that profit sharing contract helps to promote the cooperation for both sides of R&D purchasing and ease the uncertainty of the supply chain of R&D purchasing. Considering the members in supply chain are characterized with incomplete rationality, asymmetric information and biased expectation of participants’ behavior, evolutionary game is used to describe how the R&D-dominant enterprises and suppliers make strategy adjustment by imitating, learning and trial and error. After conducting contract design and modeling of the coordination between R&D-dominant enterprises and its suppliers in a two-stage supply chain model, a stable strategy combination, which improves both parties’interests under the profit sharing contract of supply chain, can be got.Fifth, based on the theoretical induction and feasibility analysis and combined with the cases of manufacturing enterprises’management practice, the author has selected some representative enterprises and operation parts to apply and test the established quality control models and methods of R&D purchasing. Then the output result is tested that the established models effectively improve the quality control level of the enterprise’s R&D purchasing and promote the supplier to actively invest quality effort cost in R&D materials and to improve R&D performance together.This paper applies inductive reasoning, grounded theory, social network analysis, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation and game analysis to research on the product quality control of online shopping. The innovation in this paper mainly embodies in the following three aspects:First, this paper adopts unique research category and research perspectives to systematically conduct quality control research on R&D purchasing and its supply chain. Based on literature review, we can find that the innovative mode and method of supply chain management have become one of the research focuses. But at present there are few research on the supply chain of R&D purchasing and there are no report about the research on both the enterprise’s internal strategy and the supply chain’s synergetic competition two levels. The research category defined in this paper refers to the quality control activity of the manufacturing’s R&D purchasing, which is different from the enterprise’s internal functional management and from the macro strategic decisions. Based on the implementation process of R&D purchasing, the quality control models are established and focus on the quality control at the levels of planning and implementation, which can fill the gap in the research on R&D purchasing; refine and deepen the research branch of the quality control of R&D purchasing; form the basis of method system through establishing the quality control models of R&D purchasing process.Second, this paper conducts strategy selection with power distribution to R&D purchasing and establishes supplier evaluation model. By adopting theoretical analysis and empirical research methods, the quantitative analysis of the regulatory relations between the inner enterprise and supply chain through social network analysis, which is based on the classification and recognition of the quality control of R&D purchasing, can truly reflect the structure of supply chain and reveal the balance function of quality power in different R&D purchasing modes. It belongs to multi-disciplinary research and has certain characteristics. Combining the power distribution of R&D purchasing, selection and evaluation of the supplier and the design methods of contract can extend the existing scattered and fragmented theories of R&D purchasing from strategic level to operational level.Third, when establishing the quality control models of R&D purchasing, their compatibility with the management tools of R&D project is fully considered. Analysis of the current situation makes the R&D-dominant enterprise realize that R&D purchasing is an important part of formulating material strategy, strategy of supplier management (the development of supply chain resources) and cost strategy. In addition, bringing R&D purchasing into the strategic planning of supply chain and purchasing, as well as formulating and implementing some related supply strategies also help the enterprise to achieve the overall strategic goals. At operational level, the established quality control models refer to the quality control requirements of the enterprise’s R&D activities, power structure of the members in the supply chain of R&D purchasing (manufacturer-dominant or supplier-dominant) and information structure (symmetric information or asymmetric information), which optimize the methods of quality control, fully consider the simultaneously coexisting internal and external restraints in quality control and help to improve the overall quality performance. In addition, these models not only can better embed the quality control in R&D purchasing in some advanced management modes of R&D projects like concurrent engineering and stage-gate management process, but also effectively promote the enterprise to bring the quality control in R&D purchasing into existing management information system. Therefore, the research in this paper not only has theoretical innovation, but also has effectively guided the practice.