Web-based collaboration system for interdisciplinary and interorganizational development teams

The automotive industry faces three major challenges - shortage of fossil fuels, politics of global warming and rising competition. In order to remain competitive companies have to develop more efficient and alternative fuel vehicles. Out of these challenges new cooperation models become inevitable. The development of complex products like automobiles claims skills of various disciplines e.g. engineering, IT. Furthermore, these skills are spread all over various companies within the supply chain and beyond. Hence, supporting IT systems for collaborative, innovative work is absolutely essential. Interdisciplinary and interorganizational development has new demands on information systems. These demands are not well analysed at the moment and therefore, existing collaboration platforms cannot address them. In order to determine these new requirements and show the gap to existing collaboration platform we performed a case study. In this case study, we analyse the research campus ""Active Research Environment for the Next Generation of Automobiles"" (ARENA2036). It is a is a new cooperation form, where diverse partners from the industry, research institutes and universities elaborate collaboratively future topics in the field of production and light weight construction under ""one single roof"". We focus on the special needs of the interdisciplinary, interorganizational partners. The requirements were polled by a questionnaire. About 80 percent of the active research workers in ARENA2036 answered the questionnaire. By the answers we can identify the special needs and also role profiles of the collaborators. The resulting role profiles specify the personal requirements. These are used for an evaluation of existing information platforms. The deficits between the offered features and the demands of the partners, as well as new technologies supporting the individual needs of users are the foundation for the information system concept for ARENA2036. In our findings we present a role-based view on requirements for the development of an information system for collaboration and cooperation. Based on these requirements we then develop a concept for mobile apps with focus on a role-based design.