به اشتراک گذاری دانش مشترک در توسعه محصول جدید مرکب : مطالعه هوافضا

New Product Development (NPD) in the commercial aerospace industry focuses on producing products, which reduce operating and service costs, emissions and weights, while increasing operating performance parameters. There is an increasing use of Composite materials in aerospace NPD projects to achieve these goals due to the advantageous properties of increased strength and reduced weight. A key constraint in developing Composite capability in aerospace NPD is the development of appropriate diagnostic and manufacturing capability requiring new knowledge within aerospace organisations. The aim of this paper is to explore the acquisition, embedding and use of new knowledge from multiple sources in Composites NPD using a case analysis of a leading international aerospace prime. In particular, the study focuses on the need for new diagnostic testing capabilities and knowledge within the Composites NPD process as a source of competitive advantage. Data sources include multi-level semi structured interviews (n=20) with internal and external stakeholders involved in the NPD process and focus groups (n=5) comprised of the Composites NPD team members. The findings show that in addition to traditional internal and external knowledge sources, out of sector knowledge (in this case from Healthcare Diagnostics) can be used to inform specialist NPD technologies. Furthermore, it is essential that knowledge from multiple sources is effectively integrated within the NPD process using a designated knowledge portal.

The current UK Aerospace Statistics (http://europa.eu.int) show that there are 3000 manufacturing organisations employing 150,000 direct staff and 350,000 indirect staff (e.g. suppliers, partners and support services) with a turnover of £18.42 billion (58% civil, 42% military) In civil aircraft, which are the main product of the case organisation used in this paper, the predicted growth rate is 56%. Composites techniques are at the forefront of the evolution in aerospace materials and New Product Development (NPD) to support this growth rate. Within the last two decades, the range of applications that use Composites in civil aircraft construction have steadily expanded, thus contributing considerably to the economic operation of commercial aircraft. For example recent development by Boeing of the 7E7 Dreamliner has a 50% utilisation of Composite structure compared to a 5% utilisation in the MD-80 developed in 1980. The manufacture of Composites as part of the NPD process utilises individual technologies from research and developmental facilities that provide lower cost and weight alternatives to traditional metal components. Within Composites NPD individual aspects of design and manufacturing process chains are integrated to produce complex products with regard to market drivers, production rates and product integrity. For example, current aerospace manufacturing processes produce new materials, with complex geometrical with highly curved surfaces such as wing components, to increase the performance and efficiency of modern aircraft. This poses problems for manufacture and product integrity, including data acquisition that requires precise control of multi-axis robotic systems, data visualisation and anomaly evaluation (Deng et al., 2004). The need for new knowledge in Composites NPD presents a communications challenge in addition to that of technology development. Davenport and Prusak (2003) and Hurd (2000) have identified effective communication of knowledge both internally and externally through knowledge networks as a key element in transforming organisational NPD. The aim of this paper is to explore the acquisition, embedding and use of new knowledge from multiple sources in Composites NPD using a case analysis of a leading international aerospace prime. There will be a particular focus on the need to develop appropriate diagnostic testing as a key element of Composites NPD.

The need for effective knowledge sharing both internally and externally is a key driver for NPD, and especially for high technology NPD such as Composites NPD in aerospace (Herder et al., 2003; Koners and Goffin, 2007). Using the primary aim as stated in the introduction the study seeks to contribute to the role of Knowledge Management within NPD through the research questions which are based on the aim of the paper and which are addressed in the annotated model shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 3. It can be concluded from Fig. 3 that there is a need to incorporate and codify internal and external knowledge using both organisational and IT based approaches, with appropriate organisational and management support (Hurd, 2000; Akgun et al., 2007). It can also be concluded from Fig. 3 that the organisation used the CAE group as the key hub for embedding and integrating the acquired knowledge within the Composites NPD process (both internal and external). This role necessitated the use of the CAE group beyond that of its traditional role in organisations to include both social and IT based interactions to share knowledge (Backman et al., 2007). Using Akgun et al's (2007) taxonomy the CAE group have become a “charged team” that can effectively utilise internal and external knowledge to achieve improved NPD performance. In addition knowledge catalysts or change agents were used to augment this process as part of the organisation's cultural change programme. In some situations lack of available resources limited the CAE's role as a knowledge integration hub for Composites NPD. External knowledge sources included out of sector benchmarking with healthcare, University partnerships and aerospace Primes. The healthcare partnership proved very successful in that both organisations benefited from sharing state of the art technology in diagnostic testing for Composites NPD and competitive tensions were not an issue (Cooper et al., 2004). The University partnerships also enabled leading technology transfer for Composites NPD across a range of projects. However some tensions were apparent in regard to intellectual property rights and academic freedom to publish findings. Knowledge sharing between the Primes was secondary in nature (e.g. through common suppliers) and focused on establishing industry standards for Composites testing in NPD rather than specific product development technologies. From a management perspective there is a need for NPD structures and teams to be informed by systematic embedding of both external and internal knowledge. The external knowledge can be obtained through benchmarking partnerships where out of sector partnerships (such as the Aerospace—Healthcare link) can lead to increased flow of knowledge for increasing innovation in NPD. Internal knowledge needs to be facilitated through effective management support, communication of the vision and customer needs and cross functional sharing of knowledge, leading to a “charged team” (Lee and Chen, 2007) which can achieve challenging NPD goals. Finally, the knowledge portal model (Fig. 3) was found to be a useful structure for analysing knowledge acquisition, embedding and use within NPD. It is recommended that organisations involved in high technology NPD should have a more systematic approach to knowledge incorporation within this process. This approach should include development of knowledge based measures of effectiveness and should effectively integrate knowledge based on social interaction and IT knowledge sharing tools. In addition the organisational portal or hub to assimilate and codify such knowledge must be clearly defined and resourced (Bourne et al., 2000).