A integração é um dos fatores determinantes da eficiência e da eficácia do processo de desenvolvimento de produtos. Neste trabalho, considera-se que um processo de negócio é integrado quando as pessoas, atividades e áreas funcionais mantêm uma relação simbiótica, que preserva as orientações individuais dos grupos especializados e que é resultante da divisão de atividades e da existência de esforços para obter unidade de ações e compatibilidade de resultados. Estes esforços são caracterizados por quatro elementos: troca de informações, coordenação, atitude colaborativa e compatibilidade. Porém, a integração só ocorre quando é empreendida ação gerencial para obtê-la. O presente trabalho apresenta a gestão de informações como esta ação gerencial, desdobrando-a em três componentes: gestão das atividades e do fluxo de informações, gestão de conflitos de decisões e gestão de memória. A partir deste contexto, propõe-se um modelo conceitual que sintetiza como, em projetos de agregação de novas funcionalidades ou customização de produtos, cada componente da gestão de informações contribui para concretizar cada elemento da integração. Para falseamento deste modelo, apresenta-se um estudo de caso isolado, realizado na unidade brasileira de um fabricante global de equipamentos elétricos. Conclui-se que os três componentes da gestão de informações contribuem para a realização da coordenação, da atitude colaborativa e da compatibilidade, e que a troca de informações é suportada apenas pela gestão das atividades e do fluxo de informações e pela gestão da memória. Conclui-se também que o modelo de processo deve ser descrito no formato de um projeto-modelo de configuração modular, que permite combinar as atividades de acordo com o tipo de produto/projeto a ser executado, e que o planejamento do projeto deve corresponder à escolha das atividades, recursos e procedimentos, dentre aqueles previstos no projeto-modelo, que serão executados e utilizados no projeto em questão. / Integration of the product development process is one of the factors determining the efficiency and effectiveness of such a process, of great importance for those companies for which product development is a factor of competitiveness. Integration is defined as the symbiotic interrelation of the entities involved in this business process. It: preserves individual orientations of the specialized groups and results from the division of activities and the existence of efforts to obtain unit of actions/compatibilities of results. These efforts are characterized by four elements: information sharing, coordination, collaboration and compatibility. However, integration only happens when managerial action is undertaken. The present work presents information management as such a managerial action, unfolding it in three components: management of activities and flow of information, management of conflicts and management of memory. Starting from this context, it proposes a conceptual model for projects of aggregation of new functionalities or customization of products that synthesizes as each component of information management contributes to render each element of integration. For verification of this model, it presents a unique case study, accomplished in the Brazilian unit of a global manufacturer of electric equipments. It concludes that the three components of information management contribute to the accomplishment of coordination, attitude of collaboration and compatibility. It also concludes that sharing of information is only supported by the management of activities and flow of information and management of memory. Its also concludes that the process model should be described in the format of a project-model of modular configuration, which allows combining the activities in agreement with the product/project type to be executed, and that planning of a project should correspond to the choice of the activities, resources and procedures, among those foreseen in the project-model, that will be executed and used in the particular project.

<p>The increasing complexity of products and systems today has forced new processes, methods, and tools for managing the development of products. It has also forced the development of complex organisations and diverse relationships among functions and peoples within product development organisations. This implies a need for integrated processes. There is a need to study collaborative product development (CPD) from a holistic perspective, where internal as well as external collaboration are studied as integrated parts of CPD settings.</p><p>Thus, the main purpose of the research project is to facilitate the efficient execution of collaborative product development projects in the manufacturing industry. Further, the objective is to provide a supporting model for analysing and setting up projects in CPD settings. This will enable successful product development in terms of lowering costs, increasing the perceived quality of the product, and improving the timing to market. The focus is on the CPD projects, linking internal and external collaboration.</p><p>A systems approach is applied to the research project to obtain the holistic view needed for addressing the CPD setting. Within the research project, case study research is used as the primary method when gathering empirics. The results from four case studies are tested and analysed in a concluding survey.</p><p>The results show that shared visions and goals, the decision-making process, tools and methods, requirement management, and involvement are the most important factors for efficient CPD projects. If the collaborative complexity is high, the first four factors are especially important. The results are presented in a model to be used as a support when setting-up and managing CPD projects. The model is applied together with a process for managing CPD projects.</p>

The increasing complexity of products and systems today has forced new processes, methods, and tools for managing the development of products. It has also forced the development of complex organisations and diverse relationships among functions and peoples within product development organisations. This implies a need for integrated processes. There is a need to study collaborative product development (CPD) from a holistic perspective, where internal as well as external collaboration are studied as integrated parts of CPD settings. Thus, the main purpose of the research project is to facilitate the efficient execution of collaborative product development projects in the manufacturing industry. Further, the objective is to provide a supporting model for analysing and setting up projects in CPD settings. This will enable successful product development in terms of lowering costs, increasing the perceived quality of the product, and improving the timing to market. The focus is on the CPD projects, linking internal and external collaboration. A systems approach is applied to the research project to obtain the holistic view needed for addressing the CPD setting. Within the research project, case study research is used as the primary method when gathering empirics. The results from four case studies are tested and analysed in a concluding survey. The results show that shared visions and goals, the decision-making process, tools and methods, requirement management, and involvement are the most important factors for efficient CPD projects. If the collaborative complexity is high, the first four factors are especially important. The results are presented in a model to be used as a support when setting-up and managing CPD projects. The model is applied together with a process for managing CPD projects.

Emerging markets are fraught with uncertainty, diverse global players, rapid technological change, wide-spread price wars, and seemingly endless reorganization (Ilinitch, 1996). These changes have presented challenges to organizations in the form of shorter product cycles, increased segment fragmentation, blurring industry boundaries, breaking corporate hierarchies, and increased interdependence of world markets (Ozsomer et. al., 1991). Organizations are responding to competition by capitalizing on global policies and adopting self-directed teams and horizontal structures that enhance external activities. To do this organizations are getting conscious of the boundaries they are operating in. With hyper competition and globalization organizations blur boundaries to gain maximum business opportunity from other geographic boundaries. For this to happen organizations must engage in boundary crossing behaviour. Competition is also managed by focussing on bringing out new products to the market. Product development (PD) is critical because new products are becoming the nexus of competition for firms (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991). They are the means by which members of organizations diversify, adapt, and even reinvent their firms to match evolving market and technological conditions (Schoonhoven et. al., 1990). This calls for a closer look at boundary crossing behaviour as part of the external activity during PD. The studies carried out in the process of PD identify external activity orientation as important criteria for success (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995). PD processes involve project management activity. Unlike other processes of an organization, PD is a knowledge intensive activity, which brings together individuals having different skill sets and mindsets. These individuals need to interact regularly to understand and coordinate their activities. The non-routine nature of the process makes boundary-crossing activity more critical for successful PD. This thesis focuses on the boundary crossing behaviours performed by PD teams. Literature review showed that external activities play a crucial role in PD (Calantoue and Di Benedetto 1990a, b; Griffin and Hauser 1992; Olson et. al., 1995; Song et al., 2000; Souder 1987). The importance of external activities for successful project development was shown by Allen (1971, 1977) based on his seminal work on communication and organizations. He showed that R&D team’s frequency of communication within the team has no relationship to performance, while increased communication between teams and other parts of the laboratory was strongly related to project performance. Teams carrying out complex tasks in uncertain environments were found to perform higher levels of external activities (Ancona and Caldwell 1992). External activity was found to result in high percentages of successful projects and sales derived from new products (Cooper 1984; Dougherty 1987; Ancona and Caldwell, 1992; Ancona, 1990; Sheremata 2002). PD is an activity with high uncertainty. The external activities that are performed by PD teams and their nature of relationships shared are variously classified as interactive and collaborative behaviour (Kahn 1996). Underlying this classification is a dichotomous behaviour where in the former embodies presence of informal behaviour between partners, while the latter embodies formal behaviour. Further research on these behaviours have shown that informal type of external activity also known as collaborative behaviour plays an important role in the successful development of products. Collaboration represents the unstructured, affective nature of interdepartmental relationships. They were found to result in improved product development. A study on software product development teams by Kraut and Streeter(1995) also showed the importance of informal behaviour. He found that product development requires personal communication across functional boundaries to cope with uncertainty. The external activities performed by PD teams were also found to be influenced by variables like product development life cycle (Brodbeck, 2001; Sawyer & Guinan, 1998; Boehm, 1987), informal groups (Hirschhorn and Gilmore, 1992), awareness, (Pinto and Slevin, 1987), and open climate (Ashkenas et. al., 1990). After identifying the missing gaps in gaps were the objectives of the study was defined. The objectives of the study are as follows: To understand the interactive and collaborative boundary crossing behaviour of product development teams To study the difference in boundary crossing behaviour of horizontal, geographic and value chain boundaries of product development teams To understand the relationship of variables influencing boundary crossing behaviour of product development teams To give suggestions to better understand management of boundary crossing behaviour in product development teams A combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques was adopted to study these objectives. Based on the past literature a conceptual framework was developed. It consisted of defining the role of collaborative and interactive boundary crossing behaviours across product development teams and certain variables influencing this behaviour. The model was validated through preliminary interviews. These interviews were conducted across team members, team leaders and knowledge management experts. A few more variables were identified that were considered to influence the collaborative behaviour performed by PD teams. These variables are sharing behaviour and confidence with the time available for developing the product. The variables were operationally defined and measurement instrument, namely a questionnaire, was developed. The questionnaire was administered to team leaders and team members. The measurement instrument was tested for its psychometric properties namely, reliability and validity. Cronbach alphas are reported. For the main study, data was collected from 73 product development teams of IT organizations located in Bangalore. From the team leader the general characteristics of the PD team were understood, as well as the level of newness of the product developed. The latter was used as a measure of level of innovation. From team members, the interactive and collaborative behaviour of PD team members was studied. The statistical techniques that were used for analyzing the data are F-Test, t-test, Kruskall Wallis test, chi-square test , correlation and regression analyses. After the analysis it was found that the interactive and collaborative behaviour expressed by the teams across the three boundaries showed that as compared to collaborative behavior, product development teams more commonly used interactive behaviour. Interactive behaviours were also found to be used to the same extent across all the three boundaries. Since interactive behavior is formal and forced in organizations it is predominantly practiced although its efficiency may vary. The challenge for organizations hence is the collaborative behaviors. On the other hand, collaborative behaviour was seen used the most across horizontal boundary and the least across value chain boundary. Since the geographic distance across boundaries increases when moving from horizontal to value chain boundaries the chances of collaboration get decreased. Hence an influence of distance on boundary crossing behavior was sense influencing collaborative behaviour of product development teams. Hence further analysis focused on collaborative behaviors. The collaborative behaviour was further studied to understand its relationship with product development team behaviour, sharing behaviour of teams of outside the boundary, demographic variables and innovation level of product developed. Correlation analysis showed that the collaborative behaviour of teams were correlated with the sharing behaviour, informal groups, autonomous team leader behaviour, and open climate only. These variables were termed direct influencers of collaborative behavior.Innovation level did not play any significant role in influencing collaborative behavior.Collaboration behaviour was further studied to understand how they are causally related with these variables. Using regression analysis, the causal study considered collaboration behaviour of PD teams in general, as well as the collaboration behaviour across horizontal, geographical and value-chain boundary as the dependent variable. The independent variables studied are sharing behaviour, informal groups, open-climate behaviors, autonomous team leader behaviour. Regression results showed that open climate behaviours was causally related to overall collaboration behaviour of PD teams in all boundaries. With respect to collaboration across horizontal boundary, it was found that sharing behaviour, as well as autonomous team leader behaviour influenced them. Across geographical boundary, the open-climate was found causally related. Across value chain boundary sharing behaviour was found to influence collaborative behaviour. It was found that only some variables influence boundary crossing behavior namely, collaborative behavior, the most. These were open climate behaviors, sharing behaviour, and autonomous team leader behaviour. These were labeled direct influencers. The ones that did not show a direct influence were termed as indirect influencers. Since the role of direct influencers was clearly understood, the role of indirect influencers needed further analysis as these were variables selected from literature and expert interviews and expected to have influence on boundary crossing behaviour. Those variables that did not directly enter the regression analysis were further studied tounder stand if they had a relationship with the direct influencers independent of collaborative behaviors. It was assumed that if they did then they may indirectly influence collaborative behaviors. For this the indirect variables were correlated with the direct influencers. The results showed that open-climate was positively correlated with awareness of objectives, PD life cycle and the team’s confidence in time line of the project. Interestingly sharing behavior and autonomous behaviour of the team leader was not correlated with any potentially indirect influencer or variable. This meant that awareness of objectives, PD life cycle and the team’s confidence in time line of the project can influence collaborative behavior indirectly. In the next analysis the role of PD was understood deeper in the context of level of innovation and duration of projects vis-à-vis collaboration. This is specifically done as the poor influence of level of innovation and duration were a surprise since they were expected to have influence on boundary crossing behavior. Teams were classified into low, medium and high innovation level teams. The collaboration behaviour within these teams was then studied. The results showed that there was a pattern in the usage of collaboration behaviour across the different channels. Collaboration behaviour was used most across medium innovation level team as compared to low and high innovation level teams. This was the case of collaboration across horizontal and geographical boundary. In the case of value chain boundary, no such pattern was recognizable. Interestingly it meant that in low and high innovation collaborative behavior was lower and it increased only during medium innovation. Further to this, the influence of collaboration on duration of product developed was studied. The correlation study showed negative relation between the two only for horizontal boundaries. This meant that increase in collaborative behavior across horizontal boundaries result in lesser time taken to develop the product. The last chapter in this thesis describes the conclusions from this study and the managerial implications regarding nurturing and managing boundaries of PD teams.

A integração é um dos fatores determinantes da eficiência e da eficácia do processo de desenvolvimento de produtos. Neste trabalho, considera-se que um processo de negócio é integrado quando as pessoas, atividades e áreas funcionais mantêm uma relação simbiótica, que preserva as orientações individuais dos grupos especializados e que é resultante da divisão de atividades e da existência de esforços para obter unidade de ações e compatibilidade de resultados. Estes esforços são caracterizados por quatro elementos: troca de informações, coordenação, atitude colaborativa e compatibilidade. Porém, a integração só ocorre quando é empreendida ação gerencial para obtê-la. O presente trabalho apresenta a gestão de informações como esta ação gerencial, desdobrando-a em três componentes: gestão das atividades e do fluxo de informações, gestão de conflitos de decisões e gestão de memória. A partir deste contexto, propõe-se um modelo conceitual que sintetiza como, em projetos de agregação de novas funcionalidades ou customização de produtos, cada componente da gestão de informações contribui para concretizar cada elemento da integração. Para falseamento deste modelo, apresenta-se um estudo de caso isolado, realizado na unidade brasileira de um fabricante global de equipamentos elétricos. Conclui-se que os três componentes da gestão de informações contribuem para a realização da coordenação, da atitude colaborativa e da compatibilidade, e que a troca de informações é suportada apenas pela gestão das atividades e do fluxo de informações e pela gestão da memória. Conclui-se também que o modelo de processo deve ser descrito no formato de um projeto-modelo de configuração modular, que permite combinar as atividades de acordo com o tipo de produto/projeto a ser executado, e que o planejamento do projeto deve corresponder à escolha das atividades, recursos e procedimentos, dentre aqueles previstos no projeto-modelo, que serão executados e utilizados no projeto em questão. / Integration of the product development process is one of the factors determining the efficiency and effectiveness of such a process, of great importance for those companies for which product development is a factor of competitiveness. Integration is defined as the symbiotic interrelation of the entities involved in this business process. It: preserves individual orientations of the specialized groups and results from the division of activities and the existence of efforts to obtain unit of actions/compatibilities of results. These efforts are characterized by four elements: information sharing, coordination, collaboration and compatibility. However, integration only happens when managerial action is undertaken. The present work presents information management as such a managerial action, unfolding it in three components: management of activities and flow of information, management of conflicts and management of memory. Starting from this context, it proposes a conceptual model for projects of aggregation of new functionalities or customization of products that synthesizes as each component of information management contributes to render each element of integration. For verification of this model, it presents a unique case study, accomplished in the Brazilian unit of a global manufacturer of electric equipments. It concludes that the three components of information management contribute to the accomplishment of coordination, attitude of collaboration and compatibility. It also concludes that sharing of information is only supported by the management of activities and flow of information and management of memory. Its also concludes that the process model should be described in the format of a project-model of modular configuration, which allows combining the activities in agreement with the product/project type to be executed, and that planning of a project should correspond to the choice of the activities, resources and procedures, among those foreseen in the project-model, that will be executed and used in the particular project.

Product development is a crucial leverage point to move our society towards sustainability. The purpose of this study is to gain knowledge on how a selected strategic tool for sustainable product development (SPD), namely the Method for Sustainable Product Development (MSPD), can be adapted to integrate sustainability aspects into the Product Development Process (PDP) of an organization. A Small and Medium Sized Enterprise (SME) in the manufacturing industry with customers and office locations worldwide is used as a case study. A participatory action research approach is used throughout the study. It is shown in the case that the MSPD triggers thinking in product development by raising sustainability-related questions. In order to be answered most questions, however, require additional sustainability education in the organization and further investigation in long-term, company-wide projects, which the current PDP of the organization was not designed to provide. It was concluded that iterations of the process with the integrated MSPD tool and additional tools to supplement the MSPD are necessary to further move product development at the organization towards sustainability.

Product development process (PDP) architecture holds the key to the management of New Product Development (NPD). A lot of care is exercised in managing the NPD to reduce risk and uncertainties. There exists potential scope for improvement both in initial planning as well as execution of the NPD program by studying the PDP architecture. This research work seeks to taps this potential and presents an analytical tool to aid the NPD Managers. In this research work Design Structure Matrices (DSM) are used to represent the PDP architecture. The Work Transformation Matrix (WTM) is a kind of DSM and it was introduced for the analysis of concurrent task structures. However a generalized task structure has not been studied analytically in the literature. In order to study a generalized task structure we add two new matrix types to the WTM set to represent the task network interconnections and the task interdependence. First we study the pure sequential task iteration structure for NPD and show that it has lower engineering effort (cost and time) than the concurrent task iteration structure previously discussed in literature. Next we study the generalized task iteration structure and derive the expressions for total work and cost vectors. This is a major research contribution since only simulation based methods are currently available for studying generalized task iteration structures. The optimization of sequencing interdependent tasks is a well known NP hard problem in NPD literature. For small sized task sets, exhaustive enumeration of all possible sequencing and their corresponding time or cost vectors can be computed to determine the optimal sequence. However for large sized task networks, only heuristic methods are deployed. Using the closed form expression for cost and time vectors for a pure sequential task iteration structure derived earlier in this research work, we attempt to devise a method to optimally sequence the design tasks. We develop new matrix combining both the node and link weightages of task network. Using the time vector relationship between sequential and concurrent task structures, it is shown that the optimal task sequence corresponds to the reordering of this combined matrix whose “Dominance index” (sum above the diagonal) is minimum. Finally, we use some of the standard test cases from the PDP literature to demonstrate our research findings.

Published Article / At Helsinki University of Technology rapid prototyping, rapid tooling and rapid manufacturing technologies and applications have been researched since late 1980s. The Integrated Design and Manufacturing research group has concentrated on new industrial Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing (RP&M) applications within product development and manufacturing. This paper is based on research projects realized in 2001 - 2004 in cooperation with several industrial companies. New developments within industrial product development paradigms and processes will be discussed. The paper attempts to link current industrial management sciences research with latest developments within rapid manufacturing technologies. Product platforms, product customization and networked manufacturing have become common product development management paradigms in many industrial sectors. These paradigms have lead to an increasing number of product configurations and variations. Traditionally cost comparisons between RP&M processes and conventional manufacturing processes have been based on break even point calculations. The latest product development and manufacturing paradigms places agility in production and efficient prototyping technologies among others in an important role. Conventional cost per part comparison methods to value rapid manufacturing need to be re-engineered. In those comparisons the first break even point does not describe the overall rapid manufacturing economy. For example, effects of neccesity for product change, tool wear or tool defect have to be taken into consideration. In this paper the new cost modeling technology and some industrial case studies will be described.

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.