Engineering Outsourcing

Engineering departments can no longer dertermine the rate of new product introduction and, as a consequence, engineering capacity has to be flexible to meet demand. Cycle times between new product platforms may be extending but new model variants are being released at an increasing frequency. This causing upheaval of engineering resource and facility plans in many design-intensive sectors.

The need to control costs has seen a progressive reduction in permanent headcount and a reduced appetite for capital investments in design support technology.

The days when companies could carry permanent design departments are behind us and the flexibility offered by specialist outsourcing has, at last, become universally recognised.

The expression Business Process Outsourcing, or BPO, has become commonplace in boardrooms around the world to describe the outsourcing of an entire business process or function by an organisation to a third party supplier.

It enables companies to reduce costs; focus on core competencies; improve quality of service and focus on innovation; access specialist skills not retained in-house; manage fluctuations in demand; increase speed to market and conserve capital.

Assystem is an engineering consultancy that operates within design-intensive industries and has significant experience of managing design and related processes on behalf of major organisations.