Distributed integrated product teams

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 134-135).Two major organizational tools, Integrated Process and Product Development (IPPD) and co-location, have been key initiatives in many corporate knowledge management and information flow strategies. The benefits of IPPD and co-location are well documented, and central to the success of these tools is the increased information flow and knowledge transfer across organizational boundaries. The fundamental knowledge management philosophy of IPPD is person-to-person tacit knowledge sharing and capture through the establishment of multi-disciplined Integrated Product Teams (IPT). Co-location of the integrated product team members has facilitated frequent informal face-to-face information flow outside of the structured meetings typical of IPPD processes. In today's global environment, the development and manufacture of large complex systems can involve hundreds, if not thousands, of geographically dispersed engineers often from different companies working on IPTs. In such an environment, the implementation of IPPD is challenging, and co-location is not feasible across the entire enterprise. The development of a comprehensive knowledge capture and information flow strategy aligned to the organizational architecture and processes involved with proper utilization of available information technologies is critical in facilitating information flow and knowledge transfer between dispersed IPTs. In this thesis we provide a case study of the knowledge capture and information flow issues that have arisen with the recent transition to the Module Center organization at Pratt & Whitney. We identify several critical enablers for efficient information flow and knowledge capture in a dispersed IPT environment by analyzing qualitative and quantitative survey data obtained at Pratt & Whitney, existing research in this area, and our own observations as participants in this environment. From this analysis, we identify key information flow and knowledge capture issues and provide recommendations for potential improvement. The Design Structures Matrix (DSM) methodology is used to understand the complex, tightly coupled information flow between the IPTs that exist at Pratt & Whitney. We build upon the previous Pratt & Whitney DSM work. The proposed DSM is not only a valuable tool identifying the information flow paths that exist between part level and system level attributes, but also can be utilized as an information technology tool to capture the content or knowledge contained in the information flow paths identified.by Stephen V. Glynn [and] Thomas G. Pelland.S.M

Developing product requirements through the voice of the customer and their link to product development : a Mustang study

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-95).The move toward Customer-Driven Product Development is changing the way companies operate their business and is re-defining future products. For example, phrases such as: Connecting with Customers, Customer First, Customer Focused Strategy and Customer Focused are all strategies being adopted by Ford Motor Company to help their products meet the needs of customers. The focus on customers has become a top priority within the organization through top down and bottom up implementation. Product requirements developed from the voice of the customer can provide valuable insight into the critical customer needs for a product. The ability to obtain, understand, analyze and incorporate those customer requirements into the product development system is critical to the success of a product. The challenge is developing a framework for gaining customer-voice data, analyzing that data, developing product requirements and linking those requirements to the product development system while meeting the objectives set forth for the product. The process requires an understanding of the product, engineering knowledge to develop and analyze product requirements and a familiarization of the product development process within a company. The product requirements developed from this study provided insight into the critical areas of the Mustang with customers. The effect of product requirements from the voice of the customer is moving organizations toward customer-driven product development and is changing the way business is done. This thesis provides a method to gain the voice of the customer, utilizes a framework for development and analysis of product requirements and links those requirements to the product development process.by Ronald J. Mastronardi.S.M

Understanding platform-based product development : a competency-based perspective

In recent years, the competition in product development and innovation has intensified through increased demand heterogeneity and shorter product life cycles. An increasingly popular strategy to meet the mentioned challenges is the use of a platform-based approach to create a successful product family for the purpose of increasing variety, shortening lead-times and reducing costs. However, unlike the wellpublished benefits of platform-based product development, a clear gap in literature still exists when it comes to understanding how to implement and manage product families and their successive platforms. We do not know enough about the key attributes of platform-based product development which can contribute to a competitive advantage, which in turn leads to the success of a platform. In addition, the impacts of a turbulent environment on platform-based product development remain largely unknown. Given these limitations, our research is directed at building a framework to better manage platform-based product development from a competency perspective and specifically, we want to addresses the following research question: How can firms improve their platform-based product development performance, from a competency-based perspective? Based on existing literature and the interviews in four leading technology-driven companies, we propose the concept of product platform competency, and identify its antecedents. We hypothesize that such competency directly affects the performance of platform-based product development. However, these effects are moderated by the turbulence of the environment. To test these hypotheses, a large-scale survey is conducted in the United States. After analyzing the data by the means of structural equation modeling using LISREL 8.7 and hierarchical multiple regression using SPSS 15.0, we find sufficient empirical evidences to support most of the hypotheses. The results lend support to the concept of product platform competency which comprises reusability of subsystems, compatibility of subsystem interfaces and extensibility of platform-based products. Our results show that a formalized development process, design knowledge dissemination across platform-based products, continuity of platform-based product development team and existence of a champion in platform-based product development significantly affect product platform competency. Additionally, our findings further suggest that in a high technologically turbulent environment, some of these factors have even greater impact on product platform competency. Based on the results of this study, product platform competency can be considered as the underlying cause of high performance of platform-based product development. Therefore, managers are strongly encouraged to apply the aforementioned four management practices to improve their product platform competency, especially in a high technologically turbulent environment. This in turn should lead to reduction in the development cost and time

Learning from innovation echoes in mature organizations - The case of the automotive industry

International audienceIn competitive industries, intensive and repeated innovation is a recognized necessity (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992; Le Masson et al., 2010). Literature on innovation (Utterback, 1994; Henderson & Clark, 1990) distinguishes Dominant Design revisions (radical innovations) from local improvements (incremental innovations). Regarding the innovation process management, one success factor lies in the knowledge articulation between front end and new product development (NPD) stages (Koen et al, 2002; Cooper et al, 2001). Then, central issue becomes NPD stakeholders' management (Elias et al., 2002) and their ability to establish perennial learning dynamics across the two parts of the organization (O'Connor, 2008). Our paper fits into this research field for local innovations on the dominant design. We discuss the role of technical expertise level of NDP stakeholders involved in early stages. The research mobilized two longitudinal studies (Yin, 1989) carried out with a global car manufacturer since 2005, one focusing on the innovation management process and organization, while the other was devoted to learning dynamics of engineering development departments. Leading as collaborative management research (Hatchuel and David, 2007), analyses were enhanced through deep interviews with project managers, technical experts and decision-makers. Analyzing local innovation impacts, we find that effect of breakthrough innovation projects on NPD organization was similar to waves: close expertise are quickly and strongly affected while distant expertise are more weakly and later affected. Our research material shows that tracking of key stakeholders is based on functional division of the organization whereas force and temporality of the innovation impact could potentially follow other propagation logic. Stakeholders identified by the organization as key actors could be in reality weakly impacted but we observed they were able to convey useful knowledge to heavily affected actors inside their organization when they had a high level of technical expertise of the dominant design. Expertise robustness plays a screen role that returns, as an amplified echo, the innovation low impact on their technical perimeter toward those heavily impacted

System development and validation process for emerging growing organizations

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-218).This thesis has the main purpose of presenting the Development and Validation phase of the product development system from the point of view of an emerging and growing product development organization, denoting the obstacles and challenges presented over the operation path or testing organizations as the evolve with solution alternatives from the industry and academia. Through the study and analysis of a multinational company of the automotive industry, it was possible to build a framework of study among regions analyzing the test and development operation of engineering organizations at four levels of growth and responsibility. By combining experience and knowledge from leaders and heroes from these regions, with the knowledge and insights from academia and literature; this study is intended to serve as a guide for a testing organization facing the challenge of growing and acquiring greater responsibility. Today's global scenario demand excellence in execution, reducing time and resources in the development of products, being test and development the most resource consuming activities within a generic product development process but at the same time critical and unavoidable. Through a systems engineering approach, the main challenges and improvement opportunities for the development and validation entities at the Ford of Mexico Product Development Organization are documented, with the purpose of creating awareness and proposing the elements fixing a path that would ensure the success for the company as a whole. This path sets the steps for further work in the deployment of a well defined and lean testing system.by Jose Antonio Almazan Lopez.S.M

Analysis of the degree of application of knowledge management in the product development process

Orientador: Robert Eduardo Cooper OrdóñezDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia MecânicaResumo: Analisando a atual situação de competitividade e inovação constante, desenvolver produtos que atendam às demandas do mercado em requisitos como qualidade, preço, inovação e tempo de lançamento torna-se vital para que as organizações se mantenham competitivas e rentáveis. A globalização juntamente com o maior acesso às informações por parte dos consumidores, mudou radicalmente tanto o perfil dos consumidores como o perfil do processo de desenvolvimento de produtos, levando-nos à era do conhecimento, na qual a inovação em tempo real é a resposta ideal para a atual conjuntura. Ao verificar a literatura existente referente à gestão do conhecimento e ao processo de desenvolvimento de produtos, encontrou-se poucos estudos que relacionavam esses temas. Dessa forma, este trabalho propõe-se a analisar e integrar a gestão do conhecimento ao processo de desenvolvimento de produtos, de forma generalizada, com o objetivo de desenvolver uma metodologia aplicável às mais variadas organizações. Para tal, apresenta-se nessa dissertação a análise da revisão sistemática da literatura, da qual propõem-se os constructos e os parâmetros de cada constructo, influenciadores do desempenho da gestão do conhecimento gerando um modelo a ser comprovado. Através de uma pesquisa com profissionais focados em desenvolvimento de produtos e da aplicação de análise estatística adequada, obtém-se um modelo de análise do grau de aplicação da gestão do conhecimento no processo de desenvolvimento de produtos, com a característica de ser aplicável aos diversos setores da economia. Por fim, o modelo desenvolvido é aplicado em dois estudos de casos em empresas de diferentes segmentos, concluindo-se que independente dos modelos utilizados nas organizações, tanto de gestão do conhecimento, como do processo de desenvolvimento de produtos, os constructos e parâmetros desenvolvidos são efetivos e contribuem para a geração de um panorama atual da organização, possibilitando o desenvolvimento de ações de melhoriaAbstract: Analyzing the current situation of competitiveness and constant innovation, developing products that meet the demands of the market in requirements such as quality, price, innovation and launch time becomes vital for organizations to remain competitive and profitable. Globalization coupled with increased consumer access to information has radically changed both the profile of consumers and the profile of the product development process, leading us to the age of knowledge, where real-time innovation is the ideal answer to the current situation. When checking the existing literature regarding knowledge management and the product development process, few studies were found that related these themes. Thus, this paper proposes to analyze and integrate knowledge management to the product development process, in a generalized way, with the objective of developing a methodology applicable to the most varied organizations. For this, the dissertation presents the analysis of the systematic review of the literature, which proposes the constructs and parameters of each construct, influencing the performance of the knowledge management, generating a model to be proven. Through a research with professionals focused on product development and the application of adequate statistical analysis, we obtain a model of analysis of the degree of application of knowledge management in the process of product development, with the characteristic of being applicable to the different sectors of the economy. Finally, the developed model is applied in two case studies in companies of different segments, concluding that, regardless of the models used in organizations, both knowledge management and product development process, the constructs and parameters developed are effective and contribute to the generation of a current panorama of the organization, enabling the development of improvement actions.MestradoMateriais e Processos de FabricaçãoMestra em Engenharia Mecânic

The Knowledge Application and Utilization Framework Applied to Defense COTS: A Research Synthesis for Outsourced Innovation

Purpose -- Militaries of developing nations face increasing budget pressures, high operations tempo, a blitzing pace of technology, and adversaries that often meet or beat government capabilities using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies. The adoption of COTS products into defense acquisitions has been offered to help meet these challenges by essentially outsourcing new product development and innovation. This research summarizes extant research to develop a framework for managing the innovative and knowledge flows. Design/Methodology/Approach – A literature review of 62 sources was conducted with the objectives of identifying antecedents (barriers and facilitators) and consequences of COTS adoption. Findings – The DoD COTS literature predominantly consists of industry case studies, and there’s a strong need for further academically rigorous study. Extant rigorous research implicates the importance of the role of knowledge management to government innovative thinking that relies heavily on commercial suppliers. Research Limitations/Implications – Extant academically rigorous studies tend to depend on measures derived from work in information systems research, relying on user satisfaction as the outcome. Our findings indicate that user satisfaction has no relationship to COTS success; technically complex governmental purchases may be too distant from users or may have socio-economic goals that supersede user satisfaction. The knowledge acquisition and utilization framework worked well to explain the innovative process in COTS. Practical Implications – Where past research in the commercial context found technological knowledge to outweigh market knowledge in terms of importance, our research found the opposite. Managers either in government or marketing to government should be aware of the importance of market knowledge for defense COTS innovation, especially for commercial companies that work as system integrators. Originality/Value – From the literature emerged a framework of COTS product usage and a scale to measure COTS product appropriateness that should help to guide COTS product adoption decisions and to help manage COTS product implementations ex post

THE NEXUS BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND INNOVATION. A LITERATURE REVIEW

Knowledge management is the new managerial discipline whose aim is to support the processes of knowledge exploitation, memorization, re-use and learning. Therefore, it can be said that knowledge management has, implicitly or explicitly, a strong relationship with innovation management. Despite this fact, knowledge management and innovation management have developed into two separate fields and two distinct contexts of research. Starting from these assumptions, the purpose of this paper is to examine how the connection between knowledge management (KM) and innovation management has been developed in the last 10 years. In order to achieve our goal, an etic approach is employed which encompasses an external view of meaning associations and real-world events. The research combines the qualitative with the quantitative perspective and the whole multi-stage process is dominated by an inductive approach. The analysis focuses on 894 articles that were published in knowledge management and innovation journals, mostly indexed in Scopus and Thomson Reuters databases, during 2006 - 2016. The main results prove that there is a strong connection between KM and innovation management although the number of KM journals that approach topics related to innovation is higher than the number of innovation journals that focus on knowledge-related issues. The concept of "innovation" is by far the most used in the analyzed KM papers, while the term of "knowledge" is frequently used as a generic keyword in the Innovation papers; only a few papers are about a specific topic such as product development, project management, and process improvement - in the case of KM journals - or organizational learning, social capital, and human capital - in the case of Innovation journals. The research findings have both theoretical and practical implications. On the one hand, it synthesizes how the link between knowledge management and innovation management evolved in the last 10 years. On the other hand, it may serve as a handbook of managerial guidelines; it brings forward the knowledge management approaches and tools which can be used for product or process innovations

Eco-innovation practices’ adoption in the automotive industry

Eco-innovation is a construct that is gaining increasing interest from academics and researchers since it is commonly considered in the literature as one of the strategies that allow manufacturing companies not only to significantly reduce the negative impacts on the environment but also the generation of pollutants. However, little is known about the adoption of eco-innovation practices in manufacturing companies, particularly in the automotive industry. Therefore, this research has as main objective to fill this gap in the literature and explore the interdependence between eco-innovation of products, processes and management. The study is conducted through a research framework consisting of 3 measurement scales, 14 items and 3 hypotheses and an extensive review of the literature. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to a sample of 460 companies in the automotive and auto parts industry in Mexico. Data were analyzed through Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Descriptive Statistics and Structural Equation Modelling. The results obtained show that product eco-innovation, process eco-innovation and management eco-innovation are good indicators for the adoption of eco-innovation practices for companies in the automotive and auto parts industry. The paper addresses a research gap in the academic literature in the eco-innovation field by providing evidence on the interdependence between eco-innovation of products, processes and management and the implementation of their practices in the automotive industry.N/

Examining the Impact of Innovation Forms on Sustainable Economic Performance: The Influence of Family Management

The aim of this research is to explore the effect that innovation, as a potential source of sustained competitive advantage and firm growth, has on the achievement of sustainable economic performance. In particular, this paper empirically examines the influence of four innovation forms (intramural R&D, extramural R&D, product innovation, and process innovation) on firms’ sustainable economic performance, considering the moderating effect of family involvement in management. To test the hypotheses, random-effects regression analyses are applied to a longitudinal sample of 598 Spanish private manufacturing firms throughout the 2006–2015 period. The results show a negative effect of intramural and extramural R&D on sustainable economic performance and a positive effect of process innovation on sustainable economic performance. Moreover, a reinforced relationship between process innovation and sustainable economic performance is also revealed when family involvement in management acts as a moderator. The findings make several contributions to research and practice