Improving co‐development through process alignment

There has been a recent surge of enthusiasm within the automotive industry to build closer supplier relationships within the area of product development. One concept deemed central to these relationships is the alignment of development processes between the collaborating organizations, an area that is expanded upon within this paper. We suggest that synchronization can be achieved through the four key steps of process standardization, knowledge sharing, alignment of existing practices, and continuous elimination of waste within the joint development cycles. A methodology for implementing these stages is presented along with the underlying principles on which it is based – the importance of joint teamworking and multi‐company involvement within the alignment process is highlighted.