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Literature review of quality attributes for collaborative product development

2022 , Randermann, Marcel , Blüher, Till , Jochem, Roland , Stark, Rainer

In collaborative product development, diverse stakeholders are involved in distributed engineering activities. This situation makes it difficult to ensure, manage, and improve the quality across company boundaries. Therefore, this work determines the characteristics of collaborative engineering which have an influence on the quality of distributed product development. Several interoperability frameworks were analyzed in order to get insights into key areas for collaboration design. Furthermore, a systematic literature review provided the best practices for improvement efforts. The derived quality attributes were condensed and adapted to collaborative product development in the four key areas of organization and processes, data/artifacts, information technology systems and infrastructure, and social factors. This enables product developers to examine their collaborative engineering environment and to identify room for improvement and to enhance quality. A case example of an engineering change order shows a collaborative data flow process, in which the quality attributes may indicate improvement measures.

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Publication

Issues in distributed Engineering of SMEs over the Collaboration Life Cycle

2020 , Blüher, Till , Randermann, Marcel , Rosa, Maiara , Stark, Rainer , Jochem, Roland

Collaboration in product development has played an increasingly important role in the past decades. However, distributed engineering creates a wide variety of challenges that, in some cases, are highly context dependent. In Germany, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role to the economy and engage in many collaborative engineering projects. So far, it remains a practical challenge to design a joint engineering environment that is not well-assisted by the science community. In addition, collaborations evolve over time. This study examines problem fields in collaborative engineering of SMEs and presents the collaboration life cycle (CLC) framework. This framework aims at classifying and contextualizing different problem domains within the greater context of a collaborative partnership. Therefore, we have conducted an interview study with industry experts regarding challenges in distributed engineering with SMEs and validated the results through an industry workshop. We argue that a high-level perspective on collaboration with different life-cycle phases in conjunction with the description of practical problem fields can assist in understanding collaboration in distributed design better. Going forward, the findings provide the base for ongoing research in a project that aims to make the maturity level of any distributed engineering environment assessable and provides guidance for improvements.