System Integration

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Customer - Supplier Relationships

It is a rare occasion, especially in this ‘connected’ world, that, as a supplier or customer, you do not have to take into account other systems, i.e. you are always a supplier AND a customer to someone.

 

Your system needs to fit into what could be called the ‘near world’ and the ‘far world’.

 

By system I mean not only the designed system but the whole infrastructure of your system, e.g. the test facilities, the experience of your customer/supplier etc.

 

System Integration (S.I.) often produces complex customer - supplier relationships.

 

You, say, are contracted to supply the platform independent software for a system, someone else is contracted by the customer to provide the hardware platform.  You produce the software but you cannot complete full system test until the hardware platform is delivered.  It is late, you are therefore late.  You could also have software engineers sat doing nothing as they wait for the hardware delivery.  S.I. engineers are also sat with nothing to do, the plan was for S.I. to start in February but because the hardware platform is late S.I. will nit now start until June.

 

This is a fairly simplistic example but it is an example of what can happen.

 

What is your relationship with the customer/supplier? Is it an understanding one? Do you have a relationship at all?  Will they just see a late delivery as a late delivery or will they understand?

 

If you have a close, and understanding, relationship, it may be possible to get delivery of a prototype hardware system so that you can at least start the software integration.

 

When you planned the S.I. process, was your contact with the customer/supplier on a formal basis only or was their a less formal, but more friendly, relationship established?

 

The point is that for S.I. to work you need to have a good customer/supplier relationship that has both formal and informal communication channels.

 

As I said above, this is a very simplistic example with, probably, a fairly simple solution.  As the problems get more complex so do the solutions, you probably cannot resolve complex problems in some formally defined manner, their needs to be informal communication as well.