Chapter 4: Collaborative Product Development

Title: Impacts of poor communication of design information and factors leading to it

Author(s): V. Hölttä, T. Eisto, M. Nieminen

Address: Aalto University, P.O. Box 15400, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland | Aalto University, P.O. Box 15400, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland | Aalto University, P.O. Box 15400, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2010 pp. 226 - 235

Abstract/Summary: Design information is used in the design process by various people in the development network. Hence, the quality of that design information has an impact on the design process. This paper describes the poor design information quality impacts and factors. Our case results show that challenges in communicating design information can be found on three levels: individual, project, and organizational. Engineering changes (ECs) are not communicated efficiently, which leads to wasted time and rework. Component supplying foundries face challenges with poor quality designs, which lead to poor quality components and higher scrap percentage in production. The factors leading to these challenges were, for example, lack of collaboration and unawareness of ECs’ effects.

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