UX-related issues is one type of issue that customer support is facing. This thesis project investigates the possibility to look at support cases as a source of insight to how users interact with an information system application at an ERP company. It is also investigated if it is possible to use this gathered information when further developing the product. Support case data are gone through in order to map what type of problems the users are encountering and a category structure is developed based on this information. The categorization framework is evaluated by letting employees test the structure by categorizing incidents in to different categories. Further data collection are gathered by a questionnaire and follow-up interviews with the classification participants. To evaluate the value in the support case information, employees with product responsibility are also interviewed to get insight from their perspective. The result from the evaluation of the category structure indicated that it wasn’t easy to make a categorization of incidents. The incidents were placed in different categories and in order to apply a category structure it would need further evaluation before applying in large scale. The information in support cases are concluded to be valuable. The collection of information related to where users are encountering problem and also how many are experiencing the same issue could serve as a basis when prioritizing the product backlog. A mapping of issues could justify resources spent on usability by showing business value based on the presumed impact.

In today’s constantly changing environment globalization offers opportunities as well as threats to manufacturing companies. One trend in industry is that to meet customer demands and global competition, manufacturing companies need to frequently introduce new products to the market at the right time and cost. Another trend is that manufacturing companies relocate their production sites abroad. Therefore, in this thesis the context is global development projects, which includes both new product development and production relocation projects. The global dimension implies that team members are located in different countries. Integration between team members, which in this thesis refers to interaction processes involving information exchange on the one hand and collaboration or cooperation on the other, is therefore a challenge. Even if much research exists with regard to integration, integration across national borders in global development projects has not been addressed to a greater extent. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to expand the analysis of integration in global development projects in order to gain insights regarding the use of different integration mechanisms. The thesis specifically addresses the influence of national cultural and linguistic differences on integration as well as the use of various integration mechanisms. The results originate from one longitudinal case study of a global new product development project and two retrospective case studies including global new product development and production relocation projects. In general, it is concluded that in global development projects national cultural and linguistic differences amplify integration difficulties among project team members who belong to different functions. The comparison of the three global development projects indicated that some of the integration mechanisms worked and were used to integrate team members from different functions, while others did not work as intended. Therefore, this thesis argues that there is a need for a diverse set of integration mechanisms that depend on the context of a global development project and specifically on national cultural and linguistic differences.

In product development, lead-time reduction, cost reduction, and quality improvement are issues that companies want to improve on to increase competitiveness. One recent approach to reach this - particularly in the aerospace industry where the complexity of product offers is steadily increasing - is to manage risk by forming virtual enterprises. A virtual enterprise is a network of partner companies that join on equal terms when an opportunity arises to develop a product offer, e.g. a jet engine offer, in a more agile manner than if any of the partners would realise it by themselves. They therefore team up to share risk, investment and resources - to in return also share revenue and profit. A driver for the formation of the virtual enterprise is the ability to effectively utilise partner knowledge assets. However, when sharing and managing knowledge effectively across the virtual enterprise, current practices have yet to evolve to meet the needs of knowledge workers, who may come from different aerospace companies, have different roles, belong to different disciplines and that may also be situated in geographically dispersed locations. Improving product development includes allowing developers from all disciplines to know - as early as possible in the product development process - more about the customer needs, the desired product properties, and the downstream impact of the decisions they choose to make throughout the process. Knowing about the impact in downstream phases would allow for significant time and cost savings due to the avoidance of unnecessary and expensive rework that would otherwise occur much further on in the product's life cycle. Among other things, a virtual enterprise can start organising and mapping the knowledge assets available in their teams, and information overload can be managed by assuring that the right knowledge ends up with the right person, to mention but a few things that can facilitate the everyday work of engineers and their colleagues. When working in a product development project, the virtual enterprise needs to assess the quality of the created knowledge as early as possible to devise the correct actions early. In this thesis, a Gated Maturity Assessment technique including the concept of knowledge maturity has been developed as an example of an improved stage-gate decision-making process. With this approach development teams are able to assess the knowledge maturity level in the content and rationale that is put forward as a basis for a decision - as opposed to only assessing the raw data of the results (i.e. thrust, weight, fuel burn, etc.). Knowledge maturity is used to support decision makers when in the process of assessing a decision base to make a decision whether to go ahead, abort the process, or order rework to be done. Naturally, if the decision base is poor, a decision to go ahead should probably not be taken, as the consequences might be negative. In assessing maturity, decision makers can determine at decision points if the knowledge base is good enough to move forward to the next step in the jet engine component design, if there is need for rework, and what specific areas need to be improved. Decision makers can divert and focus resources to areas of importance due to, for instance, too low maturity levels. Knowledge maturity is a way to - using a criteria scale that prescribes the knowledge needed at each level - help development teams assess and visualise how well they know what they know, and subsequently, what they need to know. This thesis explores the feasibility of using knowledge maturity as a way of supporting knowledge engineering in the context of a development process in aeronautics. / Faste Laboratory

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how the standardization of a New Product Development (NPD) process affects creativity and efficiency. The research was conducted on a case company through several interviews with employees connected to the process with various experience within the company. Standardization and creativity have in the past been considered to be mutually exclusive. However, recent research shows a connection between them and suggests that they could complement each other. This thesis is built upon a framework of six factors affecting creativity in NPD and has further explored how these are connected to efficiency as well. The research concludes that creativity and efficiency in NPD can work in harmony, complementing and supporting each other by focusing on the content rather than the process.

Along with the general requirement of continuously increasing efficiency of hydrostatic drivetrains, variable displacement machines are of major concern in research and development. To this effect, the whole machine performance is mainly dependent of the displacement variation system (DVS) performance. A lot of work to this topic focusses on the controller and actuator level. The aim of this paper is to offer a more fundamental view on DVS by giving a focus to the basic hydro-mechanical principles.

Oftast har produktutveckling samma generella tillvägagångssätt: En specifikation för en ny produkt lämnas från en marknadsföringsavdelning till en produktutvecklingsavdelning. Produktutvecklare tar sedan fram koncept som utvecklas till prototyper för att sedan tillverkas och säljas. Tillvägagångssättet skiljer sig vanligtvis genom att olika modeller som exempelvis Lean product development eller integrerad produktutveckling används i processen. Delen av Lean product development (LPD) som används vid konceptutveckling kallas set based concurrent engineering (SBCE) och dessa begrepp är relativt nya i Sverige. Vad krävs för att arbeta med set based concurrent engineering på ett framgångsrikt sätt? Går det att identifiera viktiga faktorer vid produktutveckling med SBCE hos företag? En litteraturstudie som resulterade i en lista med fem potentiellt viktiga faktorer vid produktutveckling med SBCE gjordes inför en kvalitativ studie av fem företag. Semistrukturerade intervjuer utfördes på Husqvarna, Saab, Furhoffs, Ericsson Radio och GKN Aerospace för att samla in empiri inför analys. I analysen jämfördes företagens sätt att produktutveckla med listan som togs fram i litteraturstudien. Slutsats av studien var att några viktiga faktorer för att lyckas med produktutveckling enligt SBCE är: Bred lösningsrymd, Kunskapsbaserat bortval av koncept, Återvinning av kunskap, Tekniskt kunnig projektledning, Tvärfunktionella arbetsgrupper. Dessutom framkom att en investering i rätt ledarskap kan vara en viktig faktor vid implementering av SBCE då företagets ledning måste ha förståelse för arbetsmodellen om SBCE ska kunna resultera i en positiv effekt. / Product development usually has the same general approach: A specification for a new product is provided to the product development department from the marketing department. Product developers then generate concepts which are developed into prototypes before the products are manufactured and sold. The procedure usually differs by the use of different models such as Lean product development or integrated product development in the process. The part of Lean product development (LPD) that is used when developing concepts is called set based concurrent engineering (SBCE) and these are new concepts in Sweden. What is required to work with set based concurrent engineering in a successful manner? Is it possible to identify important factors when developing products using SBCE in companies? A literature study which resulted in a list with five potentially important factors when developing products using SBCE was created before a qualitative study was conducted at five companies. Semi structured interviews were conducted at Husqvarna, Saab, Furhoffs, Ericsson Radio and GKN Aerospace to gather data for an analysis. In the analysis, comparisons were made between the companies’ way of developing products with the list that was created in the end of the literature study. A conclusion of the study was a number of important factors when developing products using SBCE could be: Wide solution space, Knowledge based screening of concepts, Recycling of knowledge, Technically competent project management, Cross functional teams. The study also showed that an investment in the right type of leadership could potentially be an important factor when implementing SBCE since the company management need to understand the working model if SBCE is going to have a positive effect.

Does high products complexity &amp; production cost drive high customer involvement in product development? Author: Ellen Wendel Tutor/Examiner: Sarah Philipson   Background   The purpose of this thesis first arose when interviewing the CEO and the chief of product development of a Swedish wood company. The lack of communication between the two of them and the overall information flow within the company seemed to me brutally bad. When leaving that company a question popped up: Do a low production cost/unit and/or a low product complexity on an industrial market result in low customer involvement?   Problem focus/hypotheses   Product failure is costly and time consuming; doing it right the first time can keep a company alive and give it competitive advantages, Matzler et al (1997). Customer involvement has proven to increase the chances for a successful product launch, von Hippel (1988), Lagrosen (2005), Pitta et al (1996) and Matzler et al (1997). With the assumption that customer involvement can affect product development in a positive way, any conditions that might drive customer involvement in product development would be of interest. This thesis investigates three hypotheses concerning how product complexity and production cost drive customers involvement; H1: High product complexity positively predicts the use of high customer involvement in the product development. H2: High production cost positively predicts the use of high customer involvement in the product development. H3: High production cost and high product complexity together positively predicts the use of high customer involvement.   Method   The main study was executed with surveys sent per e-mail. The investigated populations are wood component suppliers and machine suppliers. The suppliers were chosen to get a vast range of product complexity and production cost. The hypotheses were analyzed with chi-square statistics and percentages.   To get a basic understanding of the industry, I first made a pre-study; interviewing two suppliers and telephone interviewing the head of glued edge pine panel issues at the Swedish Wood &amp; Furniture Association.   Findings   Hypothesis 1 I conclude that higher product complexity leads to higher customer involvement on both industries. This result gives more validation to the emerging theory stated by Richard et al (2004). Hypothesis 2  This thesis validates hypothesis 2 among wood suppliers. I suggest future research to validate a possible theory the states that higher production cost drive higher customer involvement. Hypothesis 2 is not accepted on the machine supplier industry since the results were inconclusive. No overall pattern was found.  However, the result indicates that the hypothesis might be correct up until a certain level of complexity, after which the relationship is negative. Hypothesis 3   I consider hypothesis 2 to be validated on the wood supplier market. I suggest future research to validate a possible theory the states that higher production cost and product complexity and production cost combined drive higher customer involvement. The thesis result indicates that hypothesis 3, on the machine supplier market, might be correct up until a certain level of complexity and production cost combination, after which the relationship is negative. Hypothesis 3 cannot be accepted for the machine supplier industry since the results are inconclusive. General findings from the hypotheses All three hypotheses indicate a positive prediction that product complexity, production cost and the two variables combined will drive the behavior of “usage or no usage” of customer involvement, regardless of industry. / <p>Opponenter: Elna Hägglund och Frida Tillmar</p>

The organization I work in has 13 subsidiary businesses operating in the branded footwear and apparel industry. The industry currently faces significant macroeconomic and industry challenges. One of our biggest challenges is how to avoid excessive and wasteful new product development whilst still building an attractive range of products for the customer. So the focus of my research is on the management control and governance of the New Product Development (NPD) process to solve a pressing business problem. However, there is a gap in the literature. Many authors have claimed that our knowledge of the governance of NPD processes is incomplete and there is a dearth of actual studies in this area. My literature review looked at management control and in particular at the enduring problem of the need to generate control without stifling creativity. The literature led me to focus on the use of feedforward controls to influence NPD management teams to improve portfolio value and strategic alignment whilst simultaneously encouraging NPD experimentation. During this research I developed the concept of Feedforward Anticipatory Control (FAC), which encompasses the combination of feedforward control and double-loop learning. From this start my research question became “How does the use of FAC influence NPD management teams to improve portfolio value and strategic alignment?” From theory and my initial case study research I developed, tested and refined a tool for ascertaining the level of FAC sophistication in use by NPD teams in their development process. The tool was then used in action research interventions to help the teams develop their sophistication in the use of FAC. The tool was found to be useable, useful and have value. The action research case studies were embedded in a case study protocol to ensure the rigour of my research. This involved developing a framework to investigate the consequences of my interventions, in terms of both hard performance metrics and softer team perceptions. The contribution is in the use of management controls in NPD. The findings show that different levels of FAC sophistication can be applied in NPD and that the use of higher levels of FAC influences NPD teams to improve portfolio value and strategic alignment. The contribution to practice is an intervention “toolkit” that can influence NPD teams to develop higher levels of FAC sophistication and generate improvements in NPD portfolio performance.

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The purpose of this thesis is to investigate factors which influences product launch strategies.