Design Management Group

Managing product development collaborations (completed)

Product development is inherently a collaborative activity, involving both internal groups (e.g. Engineering, Marketing, Manufacturing, Sales & Service etc) and external partners (customers, technology suppliers, material/component suppliers, codevelopment partners, subcontractors, contract manufacturers, sales distributors etc). Partnerships for sales and distribution, and the outsourcing of some parts of production have been common for many years now, with product development and key production processes and final assembly typically kept in-house.

Nowadays, few firms have all the skills and resources to develop technologically complex products entirely in-house. Increasingly, firms choose to concentrate on core technologies and opt to collaborate with others to gain access to complementary skills and resources. As more and more operations are outsourced, these firms are becoming increasingly virtual. Others have experienced downsizing and have little choice but to outsource a number of operations. This may now include design and development activities where the design responsibility for a part or subsystem is either shared or wholly delegated to a third party.

External collaboration is acknowledged to be difficult, but is increasingly being seen to be a fact of life and the capacity to collaborate successfully can be considered to confer competitive advantage. It has also been observed that alliances commonly fail because operating managers do not make them work, rather than for technical or contractual reasons.

This project aimed to provide practical support to companies in managing the processes of starting, operating and withdrawing from product development collaborations. Following a review of literature and several case studies, tools were developed and tested in the context of live collaborative projects. These tools have now been collated in a workbook.

Collaborators

Project partners included:

• ABB Instrumentation
• Domino Printing Sciences
• ThermoElemental

The primary output was a workbook to help companies review their approach to collaborative development and provide support to those firms with little experience in managing product development collaborations (Workbook : "Managing Product Development Collaborations" ). The workbook includes:

• A 'Collaboration Maturity Audit' for self-assessment and discussion by describing good practice (and not-so-good practice) at each of four maturity levels for seven key collaborative process areas: collaboration strategy, structured development process, system design & task partitioning, partner selection, partnership formation, partnership management and partnership development.
• A 'Collaboration Life-cycle Analysis' tool to aid the planning or review of a specific collaborative project by identifying the critical issues at different stages of a project.
• The workbook also contains some useful background material and a collaboration checklist of 25 key points to consider when embarking on a collaborative project.

Download a short article on the workbook "Managing Product Development Collaborations".

Copies of the workbook are available from the Institute for Manufacturing. Download an order form.

Publications include:

• Farrukh, C., Fraser, P. and Gregory, M., (2003), 'Development of a structured approach to assessing practice in product development collaborations', Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs, Vol 217, No B8, PP 1131-1144.
• Fraser, P., Farrukh, C., and Gregory, M., (2003), 'Managing product development collaborations - a process maturity approach', Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs, Part B: J. Engineering Manufacture, Vol 217, No B11, pp 1499-1519.
• Fraser, P., Moultrie, J. and Gregory, M. (2002) The use of maturity models / grids as a tool in assessing product development capability, IEEE International Engineering Management Conference EM 2002, Cambridge, 19-20 August 2002
• Farrukh, C., Fraser, P. and Gregory, M. (2002) Practical Tools for Managing Product Development Collaborations, EurOMA 2002, Copenhagen, 2-4 June 2002
• Fraser, P. and Gregory, M. (2002) A maturity grid approach to the assessment of product development collaborations, 9th International Product Development Management Conference, Sophia Antipolis, 27-28 May 2002
• Fraser, P., Horsfall, T. and Gregory, M. (2001) Taken on trust: the role of contracts in product development collaborations involving small firms, EIASM Workshop on "Trust within and between organisations", Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 29-30 Nov 2001
• Fraser, P., Rose, C. and Gregory, M. (2001) Assessing co-development relationships, Proc. 8th International Product Development Management Conference, University of Twente, Holland, 11-12 June 2001

Sponsors

This work was funded by the EPSRC.