Design for Supply Chain for Improving Manufacturing for Industry 4.0 and beyond

The concept of Three-dimensional Concurrent Engineering (3DCE) was introduced more than twenty years ago and many academics consider that it can have great impact on Supply Chain (SC) objectives although limited empirical research on the actual impacts in terms of financial performance was been done.
Given the potential impacts of those practices in a successful New Product Development (NPD) and ultimately Company bottom-line, it is important to understand how to use Supply Chain Design to achieve higher performance. Moreover, the many challenges that SCs face to apply those principals must be empirically studied to provide practitioners with practical advices.
Ultimately, this research aims to understand if and how Industry 4.0 will enable SCs to adopt those 3DCE practices.
To tackle the research objectives, the following research questions are proposed:
RQ1 - How to optimize product, process, and supply chain trade-offs in order to achieve a higher financial performance in a real NPD project?
RQ2 - What capabilities are needed in a Global Supply Chain in order to adopt "Design for Supply Chain" principals in their NPD?
RQ3 - How can Industry 4.0 facilitate the implementation of 3DCE practices?
This project intents to structure the research in the following Phases:
Phase X, a Delphi technique exercise: Experts' Interview, that will aim to understand the impact of Industry 4.0 in creating value to SCs, and which capabilities are required for a SC to apply 3DCE principals.
Phase Y, an application of a Multi-Objective Linear Programming (MOLP) model integrated to TOPSIS method, aiming to determine the best configuration of product design, assembly process and supplier's selection for a NPD development project.
Phase Z, a longitudinal case study, that will provide a roadmap with periodic goals, that evaluates the maturity of a SC at different times regarding the adoption of 3DCE practices and the effect of Industry 4.0 to its success.

Throughout the project a Literature Review will be conducted, structured by a combination of the following terms: 1) New Product Development; 2) 3DCE; 3) Industry 4.0; 4) Supply Chain Design; 5) Product Design; 6) Process Design; 7) Smart Supply Chain; 8) Smart Working; 9) Smart Manufacturing; 10) Smart Product.
Phase X will have three cycles of interviews, where the first round is an anonymous answer to gather the Experts' opinions, the second is to gain the participants' reactions to the initial responses, and the final to reach a consensus on this phase aim.
Phase Y is in itself divided into two stages: first, the quantitative and qualitative evaluation where the MOLP will be applied; second, the optimal configuration selection where TOPSIS method is applied to evaluate results obtained from the previous stage. From the optimal design we should be able to correlate the impacts on the financial performance, mainly in cost efficiency while meeting customer requirements, and prove that the new design is in fact reducing unit costs.
Lastly, Phase Z will investigate the relation of cause and effect between Industry 4.0 factors and the success of 3DCE practices at a Company level. This approach will be beneficial because it provides different opportunities to observe those relations. Nevertheless, is important to recognise the limitations of this approach.
I will be critical to find a Company with a NPD project willing to participate in the research although it the same for Phases Y and Z since both phases are very much related.
This research will comply with Aston University policy taking all the ethical consideration needed, and a research plan was already put in place.
The proposed value of this research is to help practitioners understand how Industry 4.0 can take advantages of emergent technologies to enable Design for Supply Chain practices to reach its potential and ultimately achieve their SC objectives.