What issues need to be considered when evaluating capability for design collaboration?

What will be an ideal response?

Answer: Key themes that must be communicated to suppliers as they take greater responsibility for design are design for logistics and design for manufacturability. Design for logistics attempts to reduce transportation, handling, and inventory costs during distribution by taking appropriate actions during design. To reduce transportation and handling costs, the manufacturer must convey expected order sizes from retailers and the end consumer to the designer. Packages can then be designed such that transportation cost is lowered and handling is minimized. To reduce transportation cost, packaging is kept as compact as possible and is also designed to ensure easy stacking. To reduce handling costs, package sizes are designed to minimize the need to break open a pack to fulfill an order.

To reduce inventory costs, the primary approach is to design the product for postponement and mass customization. Postponement strategies aim to design a product and production process such that features that differentiate end products are introduced late in the manufacturing phase.
Design for manufacturability attempts to design products for ease of manufacture. Some of the key principles used include part commonality, eliminating right-hand and left-hand parts, designing symmetrical parts, combining parts, using catalog parts rather than designing a new part, and designing parts to provide access for other parts and tools.