What is collaborative product design and developmentCollaborative product design and development (CPD) is also known as collaborative product definition management (cPDM). It is about business strategy, workflow and collection of software applications that facilitates different vendors to work together on development/design of a product. The early participation of vendors in the design process is considered critical in order to improve the product quality and reduce the development cycle time. CPD is becoming more valuable because of the increasing coordination and management complexity of organizational information, responsibilities, schedules, deliverables, product information, and business process. As outsourcing and globalization increase the number of design chain participants, a CPD speeds up the decision-making of trusted partners, employees, suppliers, and customers in design chains. Design chain is a subset of supply chain. The major collaborative activities between suppliers and manufacturers are design activities. Therefore, how to manage the design flow in a design chain is as important as how to manage the material flow in a supply chain.
What are the main phases of product design and developmentBefore discuss the collaboration issues for product design and development, we need to briefly review the phases of product design and development. The major phases of product design and development are normally defined as conceptual design, preliminary design, and detail design and development (Blanchard, 2004). During the conceptual design phase, the concepts, which are also called scheme, are built in order to completely and efficiently design the transceiver. The concepts may include such as product operational requirements and maintenance, current product problem (or deficiency), functional analysis for the product, applicable technical performance measures (TPMs), and specific performance measures and design-to criteria. Preliminary design phase begins with a "functional baseline" product configuration described in the product specification prepared during conceptual design phase. The functional baseline is translated into detailed qualitative and quantitative design requirements for allocating applicable elements of the product. An "allocated baseline" configuration in the form of development, product, and process specifications is established during this phase. At the beginning of detail design and Open Access Database www.intechweb.org Supply Chain, The Way to Flat Organisation 324 development phase, a rough product configuration has been defined, a functional analysis has been accomplished, and the requirements for detail design have been included in the appropriate specifications. The information above must be converted into the proper mix of hardware, software, people, data, and specific items of support during the detail design and development.
What is the core technology of collaborative product design and developmentThe core technology comes for CPD does vary depending on who you ask. However,...