To provide robust results, this project will benchmark approximately 30 firms in a variety of industries by interviewing and surveying project managers and engineers (or other administrators) who are responsible for managing the day-to-day technological interface with suppliers.

Supervisor evaluates at least three qualified projects
	Checklist and requirements for each qualified project • Was project within last 3 years? • Did project involve outsourcing in supply chain model? • Maintain project outsourcing status with supervisor (or manager) • Review and compile brief survey of project success

Within each firm, we would like to survey and interview 2-5 (ideally 3) of these project engineers/administrators.

• Each engineer/administrator will be asked to complete a survey on an outsourced product of manufacturing development project, followed by an interview on the engineer/administrator's overall experience with managing outsourced projects.
• Each project selected must have been completed within the last three years and involved outsourcing some or all of the product, manufacturing, or other development work to an external supplier.
• Ideally all of the project engineers/administrators will report to a common manager (whom we will term the "supervisor").
• The supervisor will complete a brief survey on the success of all three projects with respect to cost, quality, and timing, followed by an interview on the firm's outsourcing practices.
• If for some reason there is no common supervisor for all three projects, the "supervisor" survey and interview can be completed by any manager who can objectively evaluate the projects' success

Time Requirements for Each Participant

• The supervisor's survey and interview combined will take no longer than 90 minutes and should be completed at the same time.
• The surveys and interviews of the project engineers/administrators will also take no longer than 90 minutes.
• Ideally, the supervisor will be interviewed first, but this is not essential..
• Afterwards, the three project engineers/administrators will be surveyed and interviewed together as a focus group. However, the three project engineers can be surveyed and interviewed independently, if necessary.

Confidentiality and Anonymity

• All information gathered from the interviews will be entered anonymously into our database to ensure confidentiality.
• Only high-level statistical trends and relationships will be released to the public. Without the permission of the firm, no firm-specific information will ever be released to any other firm.
• Furthermore, no data from any individual participant will be released to the any firm, even the one he or she works for. (This is required by University rules.)
• If the firm is willing to provide, 10-12 participants, however, we can provide a report on statistical trends for projects within that firm.
• Any quotations from the study will remain anonymous unless the firm in question gives us permission to use their name.

Question Areas for Supervisor

• Select specific projects for project engineer/administrator surveys and interviews (if not already identified).
• Background information on the duration and formal structure of each project's supplier relationship.
• Evaluation on a 1-5 scale on the success of each identified project relative to initial project targets in the areas of cost, quality, and timing. (Because we are using statistical methods to determine best practices, skill-sets, etc., some variability in the projects' success is desirable. Otherwise, if for example, all the surveyed projects were excellent, we would only learn which management practices are used most often, not which ones differentiate high-performing projects from others and hence lead to superior outcomes.)
• After the survey is completed, the interview will also ask questions on what obstacles are most often encountered while managing outsourced projects, what practices are used to overcome these difficulties, and what skills best help project engineers/administrators manage outsourced projects.

Question Areas for Project Engineers/Administrators

• Professional background and education, project locations and methods of communication, language issues, coordination mechanisms used during the project (e.g. a formal project planning and control methodology), and methods of resolving important disagreements.
• After the survey is completed, an interview will be conducted covering the same areas as the supervisor's.

How to Participate