Designing the interface between the development of technologies and products

Businesses are forced to develop new products or to improve existing ones to maintain their competitiveness. Therefore it is necessary to develop, select and validate technological ideas in a systematic process. After application-readiness has been proven, technologies must be transferred into development of products and processes. For realising an efficient development process, separating the processes of technology and product development on an organisational level has become common practise in many companies. Due to the separation of technology development and product development interface problems often occur in the development process. A methodically supported design of this interface and therefore a systematic coupling between technology development and product development has not been described yet. The complexity and effort of transferring technology into product development is generally underestimated. Minimising coordination effort, reducing iterative loops and securing a continuous knowledge transfer are main challenges in optimising this interface. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the need for a methodically supported design of the interface between technology and product development and to present a design concept for that purpose. Identifying the influencing factors for the process design of the interface and therefore deriving a design concept is a central research task.