Published Article / Any economy is based on the production and consumption of material or immaterial goods. Development is the process that creates a concise concept of a product. To develop good products within a given frame of time and resources is one of the most challenging and most important tasks within an economy. We state the common features within development project management for several different kinds of products. Most general issues are the model transformation and decision making process at phase transitions.

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<p>This degree project is on 15 university points which correspond to 10 weeks full time studies. The work has been carried out during autumn term 2007 and spring term 2008. This degree project has been carried out with the cooperation of Etac Supply Center AB who is located in Anderstorp.</p><p>It’s been Etac interest to develop a solution which helps the user of the wheelchair over obstacles. My task has been to develop a concept that solves the problem according to the requirement specification.</p><p>In the rapport the reader can follow the development from an idea to a finished concept. The biggest feature in the work has been to develop a new suggestion in consultation with Etac. The final solution has been dimensioned after the forces that arise at impact. The finished solution has then been manufactured as a full scaled model.</p>

<p>The master degree thesis project, at Halmstad University, was made in cooperation with Hunter Fan, one of the leading fan companies on the American market. Hunter Fan has expressed a desire to become more successful in Europe which gave birth to this assignment. Hunter Fan wanted the team to adapt Hunter’s ceiling fan technology to a ceiling fan for the Scandinavian market. </p><p>The design team put together a tailor made design process based on knowledge achieved from lectures and literature studies, and experience from working with the design process, to best accomplish the assignment. The problem was to re-design a ceiling fan but the team attacked the problem like; how to circulate the air in a room to be able to get a more innovative and visionary result.</p><p>The team started off with a short initial brainstorming before they moved into the analysis and research phase, where they performed a thorough examination about the company, the market, the product, the user, lighting, trends etc. </p><p>A survey was composed for both people who own a ceiling fan and people who does not. Most survey answers expressed that the light function was a lot more used than the fan function. They bought the fan for its functionality but did not think that their fan was particularly aesthetical attractive. </p><p>Sketching and idea generation were a great part of the project. A huge amount of ideas and concepts were evaluated with several methods and refined to finally result in one concept.</p><p>The final conceptual ceiling fan is really slimmed down and highly inspired by Scandinavian design. The final design includes functions, aesthetically aspects, construction issues, light technologies etc. The concept also includes a vision for the control system and the logotype for marketing the ceiling fan in Scandinavia.</p>

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.