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

In today’s fast-paced industry where fight for market share is fierce and reaching the market ahead of competition imperative, product development is a target for lead-time reductions. In this context, in product development in stage-gate processes, decisions need to be made even though knowledge and information are scarce and flawed. The challenge is how to support the decisions that are made in light of uncertainty and ambiguity. The thesis moves from analysing the role of the stage-gate process within the aerospace industry. The stage-gate process was more than a decision making mechanism, and instead a mechanism that facilitated communication, discussion and knowledge sharing between team members, as well as supported knowledge creation and shaping of the boundaries between people’s different perceptions of the knowledge base. However, the communicative and negotiative function of the stage-gate was highly dependent on the ability of the participating individuals to reflect on the status and quality of the available knowledge assets used throughout the process. To make this reflective activity an explicit part of the stage-gate practice, this thesis proposes the application of a knowledge maturity concept at the gates to raise the decision makers’ awareness of the status of the knowledge assets handled at the decision point. The knowledge maturity concept considers three basic dimensions: input, method/tool and experience/expertise in assessing the knowledge base maturity. The scale is intended to act as a boundary object, facilitating the knowledge creation process by highlighting the current status of the knowledge base and making stakeholders aware of the nature of the project’s uncertainties and ambiguities. In the knowledge maturity concept, its purpose is to support design teams at the gates in taking appropriate action, mitigating risk and focusing their efforts on improving the knowledge assets where it is needed most, regarding the situation at hand and, finally, to make more confident decisions.The thesis was developed within the EU FP6 VIVACE (Value Improvement through a Virtual Aeronautical Collaborative Enterprise) and EU FP7 CRESCENDO (Collaborative and Robust Engineering using Simulation Capability Enabling Next Design Optimisation) projects, and within the Faste Laboratory, a VINNOVA Excellence Centre involving partners from the Swedish manufacturing industry.

In industries where risks involve high consequences, uncertainties are cause for concern, espe-cially in early stages of producing a product or service when less is known about the final de-sign. To counteract this, uncertainties must be managed during evaluations to reach the best decision possible. The purpose of this research is to assert how to manage uncertainties in the early stages of designing a product or service for a high-consequence risk company using the concept of knowledge maturity and descriptive decision based methods to assess uncertainty. As such, it was assessed how a high-consequence risk company deals with and manages un-certainties in early product development. It was then determined how uncertainties could be managed in design engineering. This was fulfilled by conducting semi-structured interviews with staff at GKN, an aerospace company that deals with extensive uncertainties in a high-consequence industry. To complement this, literary reviews were conducted encompassing uncertainty assessments in design engineering. The findings showed that uncertainty in the early stages of design is either lingered on until more information is made available or circum-vented by developed mitigation plans. It was also discovered how evaluations are carried out in early design considering uncertainty. Lastly the findings implicate that uncertainty assess-ments are applicable through use of descriptive decision based models coupled with a knowledge maturity scale in a stage gated process. / Inom industrier där risker involverar höga konsekvenser så är osäkerheter anledning till oro, speciellt i tidiga stadier av produktion för produkt eller tjänst då man vet mindre om den slut-giltiga designen. Osäkerheter måste hanteras under utvärderingar för att motverka detta och nå det bästa beslutet. Syftet med denna forskning är att hävda hur högkonsekvensriskföretag ska hantera osäkerheter i tidiga stadiet av produkt- eller tjänstdesign genom att använda kon-ceptet knowledge maturity och deskriptiva beslutsmetoder för att bedöma osäkerheter. På så viss fastställs hur högkonsekvensriskföretag hanterar osäkerheter i tidiga stadiet av produktut-veckling. Efter detta framstod det hur osäkerheter bör hanteras i design engineering vilket uppfylldes genom att utföra semistrukturerade intervjuer med personal på GKN, ett flygkom-ponentsföretag som hanterar omfattande osäkerheter i en högkonsekvensriskindustri. Det här komplimenterades med litterära studier som omfattar osäkerhetsbedömningar i design engine-ering. Resultaten visade att osäkerheter i tidiga stadiet av produktutveckling hanteras genom att invänta ytterligare information eller genom att konstruera handlingsplaner för att kringgå osäkerheten. Det upptäcktes även hur bedömningar sker i tidiga stadiet av produktutveckling i hänsyn till osäkerheter. Slutligen konstaterades det att osäkerhetsbedömningar är applicerbara genom användning av deskriptiva beslutsmetoder kopplat med knowledge maturity-skalan i en stage-gate-process.