WILD further strengthens the link between purchasing and development to get the right materials with the right requirements at the right time.

Establish more robust supply chain networks and guarantee top quality while ensuring a quick time to market: it takes innovative material management solutions to achieve such a balancing act. Based on the principle of Simultaneous Engineering, the WILD Group establishes a strong link between development and purchasing at a very early stage. For this purpose, it has created a “Project Material Management“ role. Its integrative function is to link two strategic steps: product development and procurement, including the choice of supplier with the respective lead times in mind. “Which decision must be taken and when? Until when must a specification be defined? By asking the right questions, our material managers can keep track of the critical path. As a result, we achieve attractive costs, better functionality and a quicker launch of serial production“, stresses Christian Rabitsch, WILD Group Head of Supply Chain.

The required tasks of this role are precisely defined and documented. Based on their training and specific expertise, the respective staff members come with the necessary competence and mutual understanding, further bolstered by special courses they attend for this particular position. “We allow those coming from procurement to work together with the developers. Vice versa, developers get to experience the requirements of procurement,“ Rabitsch explains. “We also plan to apply this method when our customers carry out the development themselves and we simultaneously work with them as Project Material Managers, taking charge of material procurement.“

A current project in which WILD has taken on the continued development of a surgical instrument stand demonstrates how material management works. “Based on general specifications, the customer commissioned us to develop a new product generation, manufacture a demonstrator and near-series prototypes and prepare the technical documentation“, says Project Manager Markus Aichwalder. WILD began selecting suppliers for the series already during the concept phase. “These were informed months before the commissioning. We agreed together on the delivery times and deadlines for the completion of the specification documents and we updated the delivery status of individual components and assemblies on a daily basis. As a result, we were able to detect and solve difficulties in the supply chain at an early stage,“ says Aichwalder. He cites electronics as an example where individual components have delivery times of up to one year due to the pandemic and whose availability had to be factored in already during concept development.