Functional Product Development Challenges Collaborative Work Practices

AbstrAct Developing service-laden products in a virtual extended enterprise implies a wider distribution of resources and product development (PD) team members than what is the case today. In this setting, the challenge is getting a cross-disciplinary distributed team to collaborate effectively over distance using not only the tools available today, but also new tools and approaches. One such activity-based approach, based on an actual Volvo Aero service-provision process, is presented in this article. Supplying a physical product as part of a service contract within an extended enterprise demands increased speed and quality of the predictions the supplier wants to make in order to keep track of the product functionality, its cost effectiveness and lifecycle cost. One approach that has been proven in engineering is modeling and simulation, here implemented as activity-based simulation of an actual industrial work process that provides a maintenance service. The activity-based simulation approach is realized in the industry standard simulation environment MATLAB. It is created as a demonstrator of one of several future tools that may help a virtual extended enterprise to face the challenge of supplying function or services to the customer more effectively. Conclusions regarding Collaborative Working Environments include new requirements on quality of tools for supporting functional product development regarding knowledge availability, usability, security and interoperability. Conclusions also support the suggested approach concerning development of distributed, modular activity-based process simulation models as a suitable approach for supporting functional product development.