Affiliations: Institute of Product Development, Technische
Universität München | Audi AG, Ingolstadt | BMW AG, München
Abstract: Integrated product development is a well-known methodology with the
goal to optimize development processes in a holistic manner. Many industrial
companies have tried to adopt this or similar methodologies, e.g., concurrent
engineering. However, the introduction of these methodologies has not been
successful. The circumstances in industrial companies, such as time pressure,
immense quality requirements or existing methods aggravate the introduction of
new methods and tools. Furthermore, it is often overlooked that every project
in the development department is different because the processes are determined
by the content, i.e., the product to be developed, which obviously gives rise
to new and critical aspects in every project. In this paper a concise and
pragmatic approach to support integrated product development is presented. On
the one hand, this approach is based on the conscious use of methods like QFD
(quality function deployment), FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis),
project management, and early determination of product properties. On the other
hand, a central element of the approach are simple database systems that enable
designers to maintain an overview of projects - for example the administrative
aspects, e.g., the time-line or the project contents, i.e., the aspects of a
product that are still undeveloped or uncertain. The approach is being
developed in cooperation with a mid-size company in the automotive supplier
industry. The development of the database system and the selection and
adaptation of methods is based on a detailed process analysis, which goal is to
identify weak points by means of a systematic procedure. This procedure is
characterized by a stepwise process analysis. Together with the designers in
the development department, the use of already introduced methods is currently
improved. At the same time some new methods and tools are being introduced in
order to support the important aspects of the development process.
