اشکالات طراحی دانش و محصول به اشتراک گذاشته شده در توسعه محصول یکپارچه

Product development processes based on the joint collaboration of the cross-functional team, suppliers, and customers can minimize project glitches. Glitches in the product development project can cause project cost over-runs and delay a project past when first mover advantages are possible. While previous theoretical work has suggested a negative relationship between shared knowledge and product development glitches, empirical studies have not identified how different types of shared knowledge are associated with each other and the design glitches. This study proposes a model of the relationship between specific types of shared knowledge and design glitches in integrated product development (IPD) projects. We test our model using a sample of 191 projects from the automotive industry in the United States. The major findings were that: (1) shared knowledge of the development process can be built by improving a team's shared knowledge of customers, suppliers, and internal capabilities, (2) shared knowledge of the development process for a project reduces product design glitches, and (3) reduced product design glitches improve product development time, cost, and customer satisfaction.

The competitive business environment requires the design and development of high-quality innovative products that are glitch-free and also mandates that the process of introducing new products to the market be structured and managed appropriately. Glitches in product development projects are the differences between the requirements of customers, suppliers, and manufacturing/assembly and the actual deliverables. Such differences in requirements on planned vs. realized means that the particular stage(s) in the product development process failed to deliver its target requirements. Glitches translate into the deficiency of product quality and can hamper both the project and product performance. In order to improve the project performance, manufacturing firms are increasingly relying on integrated product development (IPD) processes for product development. IPD include some of the best practices such as concurrent engineering (Krishnan and Ulrich, 2001; Roemer et al., 2000), customer involvement (Griffin and Hauser, 1993), supplier involvement (Dowlatshahi, 1998), and the use of cross-functional team (Clark and Wheelwright, 1993). The strategic benefits of IPD have been found to include reducing time (Gupta and Wilemon, 1990; Blackburn, 1991), cutting costs (Hartley, 1990; Handfield, 1994), enhancing quality (Zairi, 1994), effective design of product and process (Rosenthal, 1992), and manufacturability (Swink, 1999). The key to fast and effective product development is to learn quickly about and shift with uncertain environments and create structures accordingly (Eisenhardt and Tabrizi, 1995). In order for team to learn, knowledge that resides among its members need to be shared and then mapped into a shared knowledge of process to exploit this emergent knowledge base. Product development is a form of problem solving (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991; Thomke and Fujimoto, 2000) where experiments are conducted to determine an unknown solution space of process parameters, which optimize or satisfy a set of processing objectives (Pisano, 1996). This experiential learning process may avoid tradeoffs between cost, quality, and customer satisfaction. The design and execution of highly inter-dependent concurrent tasks in IPD projects to simultaneously meet various goals and expectations can be challenging and the possibilities of glitches are therefore high. The learning challenges (Arlati et al., 1995; Zha et al., 2003) include: (1) poor and inadequate description of the parts, components, and the inter-dependence by the customers, (2) the lack of upfront representation of all the necessary information and knowledge, (3) the inclusion of new and emergent expectations, process improvements, and new technologies during project execution, and (4) lack of standardized, conventional, and unified approach for decision making and problem solving. Against the challenges and difficulties of IPD projects, Bhuyian et al. (2006) highlight the importance of having a clearly identified IPD process. As a knowledge-intensive activity (Lang et al., 2002; Thomke and Fujimoto, 2000; Sureyskar and Ramesh, 2001), IPD process reflects what the team knows about the customers, products, past successes and failures, complex processes, and handoffs between the functions (Sureyskar and Ramesh, 2001). When the cross-functional team has a shared understanding about customers, suppliers, and their own cross-functional capabilities, project processes can be planned that effectively integrates the inter-dependent team knowledge. This should help the project in minimizing glitches and improve the project performance. Previous studies have focused on the importance of shared team knowledge of customers, internal capabilities, and supplier requirements (Hong et al., 2004). However, we do not know to what extent this shared knowledge of customers, suppliers, and internal capabilities help a team develop a shared knowledge of the product development process that improves multiple measures of project performance. Although Hoopes and Postrel (1999) and Hoopes (2001) identify the importance of shared knowledge in projects to resolve design glitches, they do not suggest any relationships between types of shared knowledge and glitches. They do not examine whether specific types of shared knowledge (customers, internal capabilities, and supplier) work through a shared knowledge of process to impact project outcomes. Based on the knowledge-based view of product development, this paper examines the relationship between three types of shared knowledge (a shared knowledge of the customers, suppliers, internal capabilities) and a shared knowledge of the IPD processes that is essential to reducing design glitches and improving project performance.

An effective and efficient IPD project requires cross-functional collaboration for work and knowledge integration of the team. A lack of shared knowledge in the team can lead to occurrences of glitches. For any operations, glitches can be inferred as re-work and wastage of valuable resources. The present research investigated the importance of shared knowledge of process in the IPD project environment that uses cross-functional team and concurrent activities. As our research indicates, such shared knowledge of an IPD process can be developed on the basis of shared knowledge of customers, internal capabilities, and suppliers. While the current study focuses on the importance and the drivers of shared knowledge of an IPD process and its effect on glitches, it suggests another critical research question: what drives the team members, customers, and suppliers to share knowledge? Based on an initial review of the literatures, it seems plausible that trust, power, and rewards (financial, non-financial) may be additional factors related to knowledge sharing that needs further study. Another meaningful way to extend the current study is to identify the relationship of work integration and knowledge integration mechanism for IPD projects.