In today’s competitive environment, ever-increasing customer needs put tremendous pressure on suppliers to shorten product development cycles. This, in turn, drives supplier integration, design coordination, and collaborative product development. Many main suppliers are streamlining their operations, moving toward more external contracting of their key activities.

The authors start by presenting their research methodology and the theoretical background for the above scenario, where the main supplier becomes reliant on the sub-supplier’s knowledge in certain domains. They emphasize the need to understand dynamic complexity, and not detailed complexity. They present some theories, such as the use of product development processes, design coordination, design for integration, the use of management interfaces, early supplier involvement, supplier roles, and distributed production. These theories are then compared with case study findings. Based on the theoretical background and the case study findings, an interface model is presented to describe the important interfaces for integration, from the sub-suppliers’ perspective. This model is the main contribution of the paper.

A discussion of the results of the case study is presented at length by the authors, in four subsections, addressing issues of process, product, organization, and intention. It would have been better to present the case study findings in a tabular form, with reference to the corresponding theoretical background, using bulleted items.

The authors have conveyed their key messages, and at the same time, have kept their presentation very lucid. For those interested in purchasing, materials management, and supplier-chain management, this paper is definitely worth reading.