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As an understanding of users' tacit knowledge and latent needs embedded in user experience has played a critical role in product development, users’ direct involvement in design has become a necessary part of the design process. Various ways of accessing users' tacit knowledge and latent needs have been explored in the field of user-centred design, participatory design, and design for experiencing. User-designer collaboration has been used unconsciously by traditional designers to facilitate the transfer of users' tacit knowledge and to elicit new knowledge. However, what makes user-designer collaboration an effective strategy has rarely been reported on or explored. Therefore, interaction patterns between the users and the designers in three industry-supported user involvement cases were studied. In order to develop a coding system, collaboration was defined as a set of coordinated and joint problem solving activities, measured by the elicitation of new knowledge from collaboration. The analysis of interaction patterns in the user involvement cases revealed that allowing users to challenge or modify their contextual experiences facilitates the transfer of knowledge and new knowledge generation. It was concluded that users can be more effectively integrated into the product development process by employing collaboration strategies to intensify the depth of user involvement.

Diss. Jönköping : Internationella handelshögskolan, 2006.

This research builds on three projects that aim to investigate how knowledge transfer takes place in new product development in the automotive industry. The study seeks to picture how product development teams frame and shape new product knowledge, how they interpret such knowledge, and how they apply knowledge to the product development process. From that perspective, product development activities can be seen as transactions that are integrated into an overall system of identifying, assessing, collecting and combining knowledge. Results of my research so far reveal that there are many factors that affect the successful management of knowledge transfer in new product development projects. Based on my first two projects, using the case study approach, it is evident that for successful knowledge transfer to occur, there is a need to distinguish between design knowledge that is embedded in the tacit knowledge domain and that embedded in the or explicit design knowledge domain. The results of project three, using a survey questionnaire approach, provide a powerful demonstration, that knowledge integration, combination and creation in product development need intensive interaction and collaboration. The enormous importance of interaction and collaboration to integrate and combine knowledge has its origin in the nature of design knowledge. For example engineers produced in the survey a 82 % rate of agreement with the statement that they use mainly knowledge that comes from their past work experience as product developers, in order to solve complex design tasks. The underlying assumption of this finding is, that engineers are therefore mostly forced to transfer tacit design knowledge to solve complex design tasks. The research showed that a remarkable under-performance exists in knowledge identification and knowledge articulation in new product development in the automotive industry. In vehicle development, non-routine tasks are highly complex. This requires team members to have an understanding of the complete product system architecture. To create such an understanding, engineers need to identify and articulate knowledge. These activities can be seen as a pre-knowledge creation. The result is a shared product knowledge base, which makes it possible for people engaged in the vehicle development process to use different kinds of knowledge to capture and link new technologies into innovative products. This may require a cultural shift by vehicle manufacturers in terms of how they steer and allocate resources to future vehicle development programmes. Building on four years engagement with knowledge transfer research, I conclude that organisations in the automotive sector still rely on methods and processes that were successful in the past and strictly directed at exploiting tangible assets. To integrate preknowledge creation, as a new found discipline in product development projects creates an enormous potential to integrate and combine knowledge in an efficient way for future product development projects.

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Företag över hela världen är beroende av innovation för att vara fortsatt konkurrensstarka på sin respektive marknad. Innovation existerar i olika grad där låg innovation, eller inkrementellinnovation, kan ses som en vidareutveckling av en produkt eller tjänst där mindre ändringar görs. Hög innovation, eller radikal innovation, kan istället ses som en utveckling av en helt ny produkt eller tjänst, som inte redan är existerande på marknaden. Alla företag använder projekt av olika storleksgrad med olika syfte. Projekten kan skilja sig sinsemellan med avseende på den grad av innovation som de har. I denna rapport undersöks och diskuteras det hur olika grader av innovation påverkar utvecklingsprocessen i projekt. Undersökningen har skett på ett företag inom halvledarindustrin som specialiserar sig inom högteknologiska produkter. Undersökningen har skett i form av fyra intervjuer av anställda med olika roller på företaget. Det är ett relativt litet företag som även är ensamma i Norden med tillverkning och distribuering av sina produkter. Inför arbetet har en litteraturundersökning genomförts, följt av intervjuer med fyra respondenter på det aktuella företaget. Resultatet visar på att det egentligen inte är några skillnader mellan projekt av olika innovationsgrad när det kommer till planeringsfasen av projekten. Under hela utvecklingsprocessen skiljer sig projekt av olika innovationsgrad åt med avseende på tid, resurshantering, externa parters påverkan, vikten av ett effektivt projekt samt hur viktigt ett projekt är för företaget. Resultaten från denna studie är inte absoluta i och med att det är ett litet företag med endast ungefär 50 anställda. Det är även ett företag inom en nischad bransch. För att resultatet ska vara applicerbart inom samtliga organisationer och företag krävs fortsatt forskning och en vidareutveckling på detta arbete där fler företag av olika storlekar inom olika sektorer analyseras och jämförs med varandra. De insikter och slutsatser samt den kunskap som detta arbete genererat kan då vara en källa till fortsatt forskning inom ämnet. / Companies all over the world are dependent on innovation in order to continuously keep their position on their specific market. Innovation exists within different grades whereas low innovation, or incremental innovation, can be seen as a further development of an already existing product or service. High innovation, or radical innovation, can instead be seen as a development of a completely new product or service, which is not already on the market. All companies use projects of different sizes and with different goals. The projects might differ between themself with respect to the grade of innovation. This report examines and discusses how different grades of innovation affect the development process within the project. The study has taken place on a company within the semiconductor industry where they specialize in highly technological products. It is a rather small company who is singularly responsible for the manufacturing and distribution of the products in the Nordic. Before the study, a preliminary investigation was made, followed by interviews with four respondents on the company in question. The results show that there is no actual difference between projects of different grades of innovation when it comes to the planning phase of the project. During the whole development phase the projects differ with respect to time, handling of resources, the impact of external parties, the importance of an effective project and the importance of the project to the company. The results from this study are not absolute due to the fact that it is a small company with only about 50 employees. It is also a company within a fairly niche industry. To have the result being applicable within all industries and companies, continuous research and further development of this study is needed where different companies of different sizes in different industries are analyzed and compared to each other. The experience and knowledge that this report brings might be a source for further research within the subject.

How to make teams Flexible without sacrificing their Efficiency? This is an important question especially in the context of Product Development (PD) organizations, as they operate in a dynamic environment and are highly team-driven. The answer to this question lies in understanding the role of all individual constituents that contribute to building Team Flexibility. One such constituent is teams’ Structure. This research work examines the role of Structural antecedents in building Flexibility into PD teams. This study considers PD Team Flexibility as a means to deal with both change and uncertainty. A conceptual framework of structural practices was developed to reflect this perspective. An ex-post facto survey based research design with Convenient Sampling technique was adopted for this study. Data was collected from 108 PD teams (both public and private sector) about their current structural practices, complexity of product development activity and their performances. The information collected from these teams was analysed to determine the key factors which would result in building Team Flexibility. The analysis of the data resulted in producing five antecedents. The results from the study suggest that, in general, designing structural practices centered on team ‘Participation and Control’ and ‘Time Bound Formalization’ antecedents helps in simultaneously achieving high Flexibility and Efficiency. The result also hints at the possibility of Large teams achieving both Flexibility and Efficiency with the introduction of appropriate practices designed around these antecedents. A caveat to the above claim is that complexity of PD activity would moderate the effectiveness of these antecedents and hence should be borne in mind before implementing them.

Successful product development has been a fundamental part of many of today's companies and their continued prosperity depends on continuing to develop new products in the future. There are many models of product development. The two most common classes of development are market pull (MP) and technology push (TP). TP product development differs from MP in that the development begins with a specified technology rather than a specified customer. Because TP development is generally considered more difficult and challenging, most of the product development research has focused on MP development and many researchers and practitioners favor MP development over TP development. However, successful TP development has been shown to be a source of innovation that cannot be realized through MP development and is performed by many companies. The research in this thesis focuses on developing a comprehensive TP model to guide product developers on how to implement TP development successfully. This new TP model is developed by comparing recently published TP models to published best practices of TP development and known deficiencies of TP models. The comprehensive TP model makes improvements to the existing TP models through the addition of processes and tools that overcome deficiencies and incorporate best practices. The new comprehensive TP model includes elements of existing generic MP models, a "Technology Application Selection" (TAS) process and several new processes and tools associated with prototypes and network groups. Some of the new processes and tools are demonstrated through a case example. The comprehensive TP model provides product developers with the necessary step-by-step guide to TP product development. The model effectively deals with deficiencies of previous TP models, is sufficiently comprehensive and detailed to guide product developers, is complimentary and consistent to existing design processes and terms, is applicable to most TP product development projects, and is useful and repeatable in making product development decisions.

This master thesis was conducted at Volvo Construction Equipment at the cabs department in Eskilstuna, Sweden. The work comprises 30 credits and was carried out by Dennis Björnberg from Mälardalen University during the fall 2015. Volvo Construction Equipment is one of the largest manufacturers of construction equipment and among their products are wheel loaders. The assignment involves an investigation and evaluation of today’s windshield and wiper system for large wheel loader which is in need of improvements as today’s solution has reliability issues. As a result the cab department wants new concepts and solution for next generation of wheel loader that considers the current solution issues. This project aims to develop new concepts which answer the research questions developed to guide the project. The executed development process consists of three phases; problem formulation, concept development and finally product development. The first phase, problem formulation involves literature studies, project definition and demand specifications to formulate and guide the project in the right direction. The second phase develops primary concepts and comparisons with competitors and other solutions in a benchmarking leading to a development of the final concept in phase three. The development process resulted in a wide concept solution consisting of a new shaped windshield, a wiper system adjusted to the new windshield and with new frameless wiper blades, a conceptual pneumatic air system to investigate if an air barrier can keep the windshield clean and a recommendation regarding hydrophobic coatings for windshield´s. The development process resulted in a concept proposing a new shaped windshield system where the side sections is curved for a smooth transition between the sections and a modified wiper system with a wider wiping angle and more square The conclusion drawn from the project it that it is possible to improve today’s solution to develop new conceptual solutions but almost all the performance originates from the windshield´s shape and curvature. The recommendations include among others to further investigate the windshield´s shape and it effects in the wiper system, develop prototypes to further investigates the efficiency of a pneumatic system in dry environments as a replacement for wiping without fluids and to watch the development of new hydrophobic materials and coatings with better durability and lifetime.

Published Article / Sustainable development is the key issue for enabling the survival of human culture. Product development is sometimes seen as conflicting with the aims of sustainable development. This comes from a twofold impact: the production of new goods exploits scarce resources, and their use creates additional resource consumption and potential disparity. However, innovation and product development are important means to fulfil the needs of present and future generations and to achieve sustainable development. In this context, we must also consider the development of service products - classical services and product - related ones creating surplus value from physical products. The contribution of product development to sustainability will depend on the way sustainability issues are integrated into the development process. An important focus is on the early phases of product development and especially on the process of requirements analysis since this integrates all sustainability role players as potential stakeholders.