Software content delivery in an outsourced manufacturing environment

The trend towards integrated hardware and software solutions has become prevalent in the corporate server market. At the same time, companies struggle with the apparently conflicting goals of providing customers more customized and relevant products while handing over control of manufacturing to third party vendors. Competition is fierce, as customers who once chose on technology have begun to discriminate on price, compatibility and integration services as well. This thesis describes an effort at Sun Microsystems, Inc. to prototype the factory installation of software. Several of its competitors have already initiated factory software installation, and Sun would like to determine whether software preload is viable on systems manufactured at Sun's external manufacturers (EMs). The capability was already available on systems built internally, but these constitute the high end, low volume systems sold by Sun. The systems produced by EMs are much higher in volume, but they tend to be lower in cost and complexity. It is a challenge to convert a fully documented, highly controlled internal process into a flexible, easily deployable external process. This thesis discusses the obstacles that must be overcome to transfer software installation processes and also sets some criteria on when and where to make such changes. These findings are useful not only to Sun, but to other companies contemplating outsourcing of specific processes. As the prototype progressed, several organizational issues had to be addressed to make deployment beyond the pilot site possible. Therefore, we discuss some of the organizational concerns and channel conflicts that affect the project, both on a short-term and long-term basis. We also cover the strategic choice of

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Hung Shion C. (Shion Chen), 1976-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alvin Drake and Sara Beckman.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
• Leaders for Manufacturing Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34760

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34760