Collaborative Product Development

Question 1 a) What are the costs and benefits for both the organisation and the individual of physical and virtual co-location of teams? (40 Marks) b) What information technology infrastructure and tools may be needed to make virtual-colocation possible? Describe briefly what each tool does and what its contribution may be to effective virtual collaboration. (20 Marks) c) Virtual collaboration tools open up the possibility of new ways of working such as “24/7” working where work is literally passed around the world electronically every 24 hours to make use of normal daylight working hours in different time zones. More flexible working, working from home and so on may also be possibilities. Co-creation, crowd-funding, open innovation open source software development are all possibilities that are being tried. Describe how some of these approaches to collaborative product development work and assess the benefits you think these new ways of working might offer. What difficulties would you expect to encounter in applying these newer modes of working? (40 Marks) Question 2 a) Electronic product definition tools are at the core of any collaborative product development process. Briefly describe the major capabilities of geometry definition (CAD), Design analysis tools, (CAE) including FE, Mechanism analysis, CFD, mass properties analysis, etc), Digital mock-up tools, and Computer aided manufacturing tools. What are the benefits of using CAD/CAM technologies over older design processes using paper drawing and physical prototypes? (50 marks) b) Describe briefly the major functions of a Product Life-Cycle Management (PLM) system. You should discuss what the PLM vault does in terms of data storage and security, version control, change management, access control, concurrency control and so on. Also briefly describe applications which are typically part of a PLM solution such as CAD model visualisation tools, configuration management systems and workflow systems for controlling review and change management cycles. What are the costs and benefits of a PLM system in a large organisation? (50 marks) Question 3 a) Why is it important for collaborative working that data can move easily between systems? (20 marks) b) Describe briefly the general approaches to CAD data exchange. What is STEP (ISO 10303)? Describe some of the problems with earlier data exchange standard and how the STEP standard is attempting to resolve these problems? (40 marks) c) What is enterprise application integration? What technologies are currently available to facilitate Enterprise Application Integration? How do these tools address issues with legacy data, structured and unstructured file formats? What is XML and why are XML and its related technologies seen as a key to application integration? (40 marks) Question 4 a) Outline with reasons the key technical roles that you would use in an integrated product team (IPT) to design a new office block and manage the construction of the new building. How would you attempt to ensure that the team members have an appropriate blend of personality types and that the team forms successfully? (30 marks) b) Propose a stage gate process for your building design and construction company, which includes the initial customer approach requesting a proposal, the creation of a bid, negotiating the contract, designing the building and planning its construction, putting up the building, fitting it out, checking for problems (sometimes called snagging!) and then maintaining the building as a paid for service. Briefly explain your thinking about the work content of the major stages. What would you expect to happen at the stage gate review? (15 marks) c) Explain what is meant by ‘empowerment’ of collaborative teams? What information would you expect a senior manager to require about the progress of the team? (25 marks) d) What collaboration tools would you recommend to support virtual co-location of the team and co-ordination of work with other related teams? Explain the reasons for your choices. (30 marks) Question 5 a) Describe the key structural elements of a typical Stage gated new product introduction process and what happens at a stage gate review and discuss what work is typically done in each stage. (40 Marks) b) What do you think are the benefits and problems with the stage gate approach to new product development and what suggestions have Cooper and others made to overcome these problems? (30 Marks) c) Describe some alternative models of new product introduction and the benefits they might offer. You might discuss models such as the spiral model, the V-model, the scrum/agile model and so on. (30 Marks)