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partners with a greater interest for their own benefit, and at the expense of the
partners with the stronger interest. This is where a balanced distribution of
opportunities and risks is extremely important. In practice, cases sometimes arise
Project Cooperation
385
that can be used as an example in this respect: a partner with no capacity for
additional orders feigns a strong interest, or a partner from a country that grants
government-backed credit and favors a competitor from this country, feels too
secure in their role as a cooperation partner for these or other reasons. In these
cases the partner’s true interests are difficult to identify, but it should be attempted
in order to prevent incorrect decisions.
Interface Problems
A task that is often neglected is the clear limitation of the areas of responsibility of
the individual partners. If this results in gaps in the delivery or performance area,
this can lead to significant performance, warranty and liability claims by the
customer. This, in turn—especially in consortia—leads to serious disputes between
the partners in order to clarify who bears the responsibility and the risk for the
claims. The more consortium partners are involved, the more difficult, complicated
and protracted the disputes. In the case of a general contractor, they alone bear the
risk if the subcontracted deliveries and performances are not assigned properly or in
full. However, in the event of disputes, the decision-making options are available to
the general contractor alone.
Allocation of Risks
The deliveries and services and the associated areas of responsibility and risks, on
the one hand, and the share of the customer price and payment flow, on the other,
for the respective partner should align and ‘fit’. A partner should take on and
potentially calculate the risks that arise from their share, which they can influence
and with which they should be familiar based on their experiences. Particular care is
required if a partner is happy to take risks, but only has a low liability base (e.g. low
share capital). Difficulties can easily arise in the case of risks that are difficult to
manage (e.g. for local deliveries and performances, construction and installation).
In these cases, the takeover of the respective activities by the customer, or a
financial risk involvement by the customer can ease the burden.
Pricing in a Consortium
The cooperation decision should not lead to an unnecessary increase in the proposal
and offer price for the project. This risk particularly exists in consortia, and
especially if no adequate and clear limitation of responsibility and risk has been
defined. Given that each partner bears a part of the other partners’ risk in a
consortium, due to the joint and several liability, there is the tendency to add
these risks together, which can lead to significant price increases. This can only
be avoided if all the partners agree to a standard approach to the calculation and
openly discuss and jointly assess the risks arising from the cooperation and then
agree on a corresponding pricing.
386
B. Gu¨nter
6
Product Development Cooperation
A special form of project cooperation is the cooperation in a project whose purpose
is to develop new products or services. This typically relates to the following types
of cooperation:
1. Cooperation between a technology supplying or product development company
and a production and/or marketing company
2. Cooperation between manufacturers and retailers
3. Cooperation between a company and its suppliers and
4. Cooperation between a company and consultants
The cooperation with suppliers, mentioned in the third point, is used here by way
of example. One of the project objectives in these types of cases is the acceleration
of the innovation and development cycle. This intends to ensure that a product can
enter the second stage of the product life cycle, the market cycle, as quickly as
possible based on an accelerated market introduction. The method, which now
plays a particular role in reducing the development time, is
Simultaneous Engineer-
ing
(Chelsom
1989
). This refers to a project-based cooperation of the company in
question with suppliers of materials, machines, etc. The aim is to ensure that
consecutive steps, such as product development, material ordering, machinery
acquisition, etc., overlap and take place in early cooperation with strategic partners
on the procurement side (cf. the diagram in Fig.
6
). This can be referred to as a
vertical project cooperation from the perspective of the developing company. The
specific features of simultaneous engineering are summarized in Table
13
.
t = 0
t = n
t = 0
t = n
Sequential relationships
Product development
Internal development
Design
Production process development
Supplier development
Testing
Parallel relationships ("simultaneous engineering")
Product development
Production process development
Internal development
Supplier development
Design
Testing
Time gain
Fig. 6
Diagrammatic representation of planning processes with and without simultaneous engi-
neering (based on Eichler and Steinau
1993
, p. 29)
Project Cooperation
387
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