outsourcing

A new business model, conceived by WZL of the University of Aachen, bases on Open Source development and advances Outsourcing. Commercial Open Source Development (COSD) has the capability to break open the area of conflict between customer orientation, individualisation, product design costs and error probability by embedding the customer systematically and lucratively into product development. Two trends of product design support COSD: Functions of technical products can be increasingly affected through Software solutions; Open Source principals have reached a high level of maturity.

The globalization process is frequently associated with negative effects on employment and the labour market. Not rarely a common opinion is that outsourcing and portfolio investments have negative effects on the labour market. Also a loss of the industrial basis is feared. However these statements are not comprehensive enough. A more differentiated examination shows that the international division of labour caused by the globalization has positive effects on production and the labour market and thus causes increases in welfare. The high unemployment is not caused by the globalization, but by failures of the politics.

Because competition is getting harder and harder, outsourcing becomes more important for companies. Especially lower labour costs, opening up new markets and capacity bottlenecks are the main reasons for companies to source out. The influence of outsourcing onto a company’s profit and performance was examined on the basis of a survey of Austrian production companies. As a result you can also see risks and the effects of wrong outsourcing in this paper.

Many companies have difficulties managing the recent situation of competition. Some companies achieve only small cost savings through the use of rationalization strategies. Network cooperations, however, offer many possibilities to successfully take advantage of efficiency increasing synergy effects. All participating companies can concentrate harder on their core business and achieve other features in cooperation with partner companies. This development concerns major enterprises as well as medium-sized businesses. While Outsourcing can be seen as a routine job for major enterprises, it poses problems for medium-sized businesses. These companies are lacking the necessary experience as well as tools to evaluate Outsourcing. This contribution points out the problems, that are related to Outsourcing in medium-sized businesses and demonstrates solutions.

Increasingly enterprises are hoping for a decline of marginal unit costs by turning away from in-house logistics. Free competition among contract logistics services is believed to open up new optimisation potentials. At the same time, performance related accounting models permit to transform the formerly fixed logistics costs into variable costs. However, because of the complexity and the customer-specific character of supply chain processes there is no standard method for the rating and selection of suitable service partners. The main problem is to provide information for a detailed description of the expected performance spectrum and thus to enable performance related contract positions. The method of „quantity and product related logistics costs” permits an exact quantification for multi stage products before placing a service order. It is a contribution to cope with the challenges described above.