Complex Product Development Research Articles

Knowledge Integration in Large-Scale Organizations and Networks – Conceptual Overview and Operational Definition

Knowledge integration is an emerging discipline in organizational science where the central proposition is that the increasing complexity of products and services being developed and delivered, means that the knowledge required for production is increasingly specialized, varied (multi-disciplinary) and distributed across the organization’s internal boundaries, and as a result there is a need for organizations to continuously gather their knowledge resources in order to maintain their ability to innovate, and to sustain their competitive position in the market. In addition, the increasing scale and scope of organizational arrangements, such as multinational partnerships or multi-tiered prime-supplier arrangements commonly encountered in the aerospace, automotive and other complex product development industries, also give rise to environments of dispersed knowledge resources, thus necessitating the subsequent integration of this knowledge across external boundaries spanning large-scale organizational networks. Knowledge integration in this context is done through a process of transferring knowledge from multiple sources in the organizational network to where it is needed, combining it with existing knowledge, before it can be applied to accomplish complex tasks and to solve major problems. The primary purpose of this paper is to define the powerful concept of knowledge integration in large-scale organizational networks using an extensive review of the pertinent literature on knowledge in organizations. An operational definition for knowledge integration is also proposed, followed by a systematic identification and classification of the different strategies, practices, channels and mechanisms for integrating different types of knowledge across a multitude of organizational boundaries and environments.

A HLA-Enabling Method in Collaborative Simulation Environment for Complex Product Development

HLA-based collaborative simulation is an effective way to integrate different disciplinary models together for the design and development of complex product. In this paper, the HLA-enabling method based on HLA agent model is proposed to make models created through commercial software compatible with HLA standard. Next, a prototype system for forging manipulator system based on such HLA-enabling method is developed accordingly, where an approach of developing ABAQUS engine agent is proposed, which solves the difficulty of wrapping ABAQUS software. Finally, a case study on forging and manipulating process is conducted and verifies the high fidelity and effectiveness of our collaborative simulation technology.

Estimation of product development cycle time resulting from early supplier involvement

Early supplier involvement (ESI) is widely applied to improve the product development process and has been proved to be able to shorten product development cycle time. The current study presents a systematic approach to support enterprises in selecting suitable tasks for implementing ESI. In order to estimate the influence of ESI on product development cycle time, the proposed method analyses complex product development processes to determine how to implement collaborative design appropriately via design structure matrix. This approach integrates an analysis of the binary design structure matrix, two-dimensional variables (sensitivity and variability), and the amount of overlapping of the tasks to discuss complex issues associated with product development cycle time. By applying the influence analysis to overlapping, the study identifies suitable tasks and the priority of each task to collaborative design. Finally, a simplified case study is discussed to demonstrate how enterprises can utilize the proposed method.

Functional meals: technological, practical and consumer perspectives

AbstractServing functional (health‐improving) meals in restaurants is a novel concept that requires complex product development to optimise taste and texture and minimise the impact of preparation on nutritional functionality. This can be facilitated through the latest technological advances such as the wide range of novel ingredients, equipment and preparation techniques including developments in molecular gastronomy. From a business perspective, functional meals present an opportunity for differentiation; from a consumer perspective, it offers an alternative to highly processed industrial functional foods such as those found on supermarket shelves. Technological complexity and legislative requirements are the main obstacles for future developments.

8.3.3 Different Levels of Centralized Engineering Database Strategies for Integrated Development

AbstractThe development of large and complex products is currently carried out in small, separate teams of engineers trained in diverse disciplines. Mechanical and electrical engineers are involved in the development of high‐tech and embedded systems as well as software designers. This diversity of disciplines interferes with the efficiency of communication, which is usually carried out in (informal) discussions and by passing documents and models.Within this paper, the passing of documents is explained and enhanced in several levels. Solutions, which are currently available (such as tool chains) are discussed as well as approaches that rest upon a central, document‐ and object‐oriented database. The most elaborate database strategy presented uses similarity relations between documents to infer semantic meaning and facilitate the access to meaningful and relevant development data. This paper concludes with the description of development processes that are introduced with the use of this database solution.

A simulation approach for evaluation and improvement of organisational planning in collaborative product development projects

Human behaviour and organisational structure impact collaborative product development outcome on a large scale. Therefore, companies are continuously seeking new opportunities to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and predictability of their collaborative product development projects, and to develop innovative principles for organisational design and management such as multi-functional teams. However, there are many factors which have to be considered and assessed to systematically optimise organisational planning in respect of team configuration, structure organisation, and human behaviour. This paper proposes an agent-based simulation methodology to evaluate and improve the organisational planning in complex product development projects. An agent-based integrated simulation model is formulated which can explicitly represent human behaviour, organisational interactions, and tasks networks. Based on the model, the design agent structure and behaviour protocols are studied in detail, and a simulation platform is developed. Finally, the methodology is evaluated in a collaborative roadway design project, and several management insights are established, which are proven to be effective for the organisational optimisation. The results of the case study also show that the methodology can effectively support the evaluation and improvement of organisational planning.

Special issue on: Collaborative and Multi-disciplinary Product Design

Collaborative and multi-disciplinary design can be defined as a process to coherently exploit the synergy of mutually interacting disciplinary expertise to optimize complex and large-scale product development. Due to the product complexity and the disciplinary backgrounds of engineers, the organization and management of the process remains as a challenge. Some difficulties include: there is no effective collaborative and multidiscipline development platform; efficient ways for knowledge and information exchange across domains do not exist; collaborative engineering needs sophisticated and optimized strategies to solve conflicts and to achieve better system performance; more research is required to provide designers with better understanding and more efficient approaches on the integration of conceptual design and detailed design to achieve the overall optimization, etc. To find effective solutions, many organizations, including academic, researchoriented, governmental, industrial and commercial ones, have recently started a number of research initiatives. In this special issue, seven papers are included to update the latest progress in this significant research area. The majority of the papers are the extended and peer-reviewed versions of those selected from the 2008 International Conference of Advances on Product Development and Reliability (PDR’2008), Chengdu, China, in which more than 100 papers were presented. The topics covered by this special issue are: unified product models to support lifecycle knowledge sharing, interoperability in collaborative engineering across design, manufacturing, operation, maintenance, and end-of-life stages, multi-disciplinary optimization models to support collaborative conceptual design, systematic and collaborative methodologies to generate innovative design from product requirements, and the development of software platforms and tools to support collaborative design processes and information retrieval. The first paper by Ding et al. presents a unified and XML-based product model to support lifecycle information and knowledge exchange. The model offers the potential to enable designers to revisit and retrieve the information throughout the lifecycle of machine design and build processes dynamically. An industrial case study for cleaning tank design has been used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the operation of the model. The second paper by Ma investigates the interoperability in collaborative engineering across design, manufacturing, operation, maintenance, and end-of-life stages with an expanded generic feature paradigm. A unified and consistent interoperable semantic scheme has been proposed to support an open and flexible knowledge realization system. The scheme and system have been applied to the oil production industry, and three design cases for grating layout, oil tank scaffolding and the piping system during an oil rig design process have been discussed. The third paper by Chu et al. addresses the uncertainty issue in collaborative and multi-disciplinary conceptual design. Based on the summary of uncertainties in conceptual design, a systematic tool based on the rough set theory and advanced kriging model has been developed to represent the approximate relationships between major design parameters. With the approximate relationships, designers can adjust design parameters and evaluate the impact of the changes to the overall performance of the design so as to facilitate decision making in the conceptual design stage. The fourth paper by Tang et al. proposes a new design process model based on Axiomatic Design (AD) and Design Structure Matrix (DSM). Both AD and DSM are design process management methods but applicable to different stages of design. The rationale of this research work is to combine the two models to take their *Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. weidong.li@coventry.ac.uk

A new integrated decision-making approach for design alternative selection for supporting complex product development

Design alternative selection is regarded as a crucial activity in complex product development. The traditional decision-making methods barely consider the design alternative evaluation of complex products or integrate the voices of customers into the decision process systematically. The aim of this paper is to improve the effectiveness of decision making about multiple design alternatives in complex product development under uncertainty. Based on the integration of quality function deployment and group decision making, a new decision-making approach is proposed for assisting product designers in selecting the design alternatives of complex products. Meanwhile, fuzzy set theory is incorporated in order to capture the vagueness and uncertainty that exists in the decision process. In this study, a complex product is divided into multi-parts to form a hierarchical structure. Fuzzy quality function deployment is used for translating customer requirements into the priorities of these parts. Furthermore, a fuzzy multi-criteria group decision-making method is employed for evaluating the performance of part alternatives. All design alternatives are ranked and then selected according to the multiplied evaluation scores of parts with their weights. This proposed approach is applied in a real-world example of a horizontal directional drilling machine. In addition, how the importance weights of customer requirements and evaluation criteria change are analysed under various risk environments.

Administration and operation of product-related content

This paper presents methods, models and tools which are of relevance for the administration and operation of product-related content during the development of complex products. The central method presented in this paper is a handling method including a product data model and a process model as a tool and as well as a method, respectively, for analysing the interactions of the actors of a product development project. The effects which could be achieved by using the presented methods, models and tools are higher efficiency and speed of the development of complex products as a result. Thus, positive effects on these important factors determining a company's success are aimed at.

Corporate governance relationships in complex product development: evidence from the business aviation industry

Corporate Governance relationships have become more relevant to the changed nature of the firm, the role of human capital has become very important in managing the firm in those environments where the source of competitive advantage is strongly based on knowledge and intangible resources as in the case of complex product systems industries. The important role of this intangible asset in managing the complex environment has amplified the incompleteness of the agency theory, changing the nature of the Corporate Governance relationships and highlighting the role of the human capital. This paper attempts to describe, using Problem Solving Behaviour approach, how the Corporate Governance relationships work in high competitive and complex environments as in case of the business aviation industry.

Intellectual Property in collaborative projects: navigating the maze

This paper analyses the use of Information Technology (IT) tools in the management of Intellectual Property (IP) in collaborative projects involving groups of firms and their customer organisations in the design, development, manufacture and maintenance of complex products. We find that IT tools have long offered management capacities that have not been fully utilised. Through an in-depth study of IP management practice in collaborative defence projects we analyse the slow diffusion of available technological solutions and identify two contrasting models to set up inter-organisational networks for the exchange of large amounts of technical data.

A product information and knowledge exchange framework: a multiple viewpoints approach

The design and development of complex products invariably involves many actors who have different points of view on the problem they are addressing, the product being developed and the process by which it is being developed. The actors' viewpoints (VPs) approach was designed to provide an organisational framework in which these different perspectives/points of views, and their relationships, could be explicitly gathered and formatted (by actor activity's focus). The approach acknowledges the inevitability of multiple interpretations of product information as different views and promotes gathering of actors' interests. It also helps in providing support for the information integration through the lifecycle of the products and for the collaboration between the supply chain actors. In this paper, we present the multiple VPs approach, and we illustrate it by an industrial example on cyclone vessel products.

Robust decision and optimisation for collaborative parameter design

The overall performance of a complex product generally depends on a number of specifications distributed in multi-teams from different disciplines, such as mechanics, cybernetics, dynamics and so on. The paper presents a robust decision and optimisation approach based on multidisciplinary modelling for complex product development. In this paper, the design knowledge is presented as constraints network from multidisciplinary domain. Then multidisciplinary robust decision and optimisation method is presented to solve the model. The method described in this paper was used to develop knowledge driven multidisciplinary collaborative design system, which is applied to railway vehicle development processing.

Research on Integrated System of Information and Function Based on Virtual Prototyping Technology

Virtual prototyping technology as a key technology for agile manufacturing can deal with multidisciplinary knowledge across different fields. In the complex product development process, the exchange between heterogeneous data in heterogeneous environment is a universal problem encountered, which increases the complexity of collaborative parallel design of virtual prototype. Taking the product models as carriers and the different function requirements as clues, the knowledge structure and expression of product information in various fields was studied. By adopting component object model technology, direct geometry access technology, behavioural modeling technology and parametric design thinking, the interaction among tools in various function units was realized, and the effective integration of information and function in multi-fields was accomplished, the parameter-driven virtual prototype architecture of complex product based on the integration of information and function was created. The feasibility of this architecture has been verified by the actual engineering. This plan provides an effective way to carry out virtual prototype projects for enterprise.

Computer supported collaborative design: Retrospective and perspective

Industry today requires new technologies to address increasingly complex product development and the high expectations of customers. Computer Supported Collaborative Design (CSCD) emerged in response to this requirement. With the rapid advancement of Internet and Web-based technologies, CSCD has been a very active R&D area in the past 15 years and has progressed dramatically. To achieve its full potential, more and more research and commercial CSCD systems have been recently developed. The depth and breadth of these applications and systems are far beyond the traditional definition of concurrent engineering. This paper presents a review of the R&D literature on CSCD, from the pre-CSCD technologies of the 1980s to today's state-of-the-art CSCD. Research challenges and opportunities on CSCD are also discussed and highlighted.

An integrated and collaborative approach for complex product development in distributed heterogeneous environment

Multidisciplinary collaborative modeling and simulation is an effective approach to verify the dynamic behaviour of a complex product such as an aerospace vehicle or a locomotive. The design environment of such products must cater for the requirement for geographical distribution and structural heterogeneity in the modern industrial context. The focus of our research is a solution for such a collaborative modeling and simulation environment. Our approach is to utilize the IEEE standard High Level Architecture for distributed simultaneous simulation execution and management. At the same time, Web services technology is employed to deploy and integrate functional models for the simulation. The method for model description in this framework is proposed. The techniques for simulation execution and service encapsulation are discussed. A prototype system is implemented and a case study of locomotive tilting component design is executed. We find that both High Level Architecture and Web services have their expertise for collaborative simulation and the integration of these two technologies does achieve better interoperability and reusability among heterogeneous simulation components in a distributed environment. The new approach has considerable promise for the efficient and successful complex product design.

Exploration of Correlations between Factors Influencing Communication in Complex Product Development

Designing complex products, such as jet engines, cars or certain types of software, necessitates the coordination of activities of many participants during the design process. Communication is seen as the vehicle by which this coordination could be achieved. Communication itself is influenced by many different factors that are connected. This study presents an exploration of correlations between these factors based on statistical analyses of empirical data. The research uses data collected via the `Communication Grid Method', (CGM) a structured maturity grid method to assess the perception of communication within and across team-interfaces. Five empirical studies in the aerospace, automotive, and IT industries where concurrent engineering is practiced are used. The results offer insights for researching and managing communication across inter-departmental interfaces. It has been shown in particular, how directly and indirectly linked factors influencing communication in product development form a network of correlations. Mutual trust and collaboration exhibit thematic centrality.

Special Issue on “Engineering Informatics”

Special Issue on “Engineering Informatics”

A Modeling Framework for Product Development Process Considering its Characteristics

Product development (PD) processes are complex and unstructured compared to business or manufacturing processes, as they have iterative, evolutionary, uncertain, and cooperative features. In order to effectively manage and control a complex PD process, appropriate and logical descriptions are needed. This requires a modeling framework that can capture its characteristics. However, previous modeling methodologies are limited in terms of representing the characteristics. To cope with this limitation, we propose a modeling framework that can address the typical features of the PD process. To this end, we classify PD characteristics systematically and define modeling constructs for the PD process with modeling patterns and parameters. The proposed modeling framework will provide engineers and managers with a basis for planning, organizing, analyzing, and monitoring complex PD processes effectively.

Organizing Complex Product Development: Outsourcing, Performance Integration and the Role of Product Architecture

Several streams of recent literature emphasize the advantages of involving external sources of innovation in the process of developing complex products (Powell et al., 1996; Helper et al., 2000; Sturgeon, 2002; Chesbrough, 2003). The question we tackle in the present article is 'What are the key micro organizational decisions for seizing the benefits of a networked innovation strategy?' Building on empirical evidence gathered over a ten-year period at a major European automotive manufacturer, the article presents empirical insights on the organizational challenges that firms face when they decide to rely on external sources of innovation in developing complex products. The empirical evidence highlights two aspects that are important: The role of component specific knowledge in addressing the integration of overall product performance, and the role of learning by doing opportunities in accumulating component specific knowledge. The article shows how managers can greatly benefit from focusing their attention on the organizational aspects of leveraging external sources of innovation and adjusting their innovation strategy, including 'make or buy' choices, accordingly. Strategic and micro organizational decisions, hence, should be considered as tightly coupled and mutually influencing in the context of complex product development. This quite intuitive outcome has been partially neglected in current innovation literature and management practice due to an overemphasis given to product architecture and the possibilities in terms of organization that it enables.