Collaborative product development

Product development processes and methods must be adapted ever more quickly to changing technological and organizational conditions. The principles of agile (software) development and, in particular, structured reflection support the targeted adaptation and introduction of new processes and methods into an organization's existing ecosystem. The challenge here is to take a comprehensive, socio-technical view of the development context in order to ensure the acceptance and effectiveness of new procedures and methods. Based on the concept of Advanced Systems Engineering, we focus on the following research topics:

• Principles for the context-specific adaptation of development methods based on elementary methods and adaptable method descriptions
• Planning, initiation and integration of structured reflections in the development process for the targeted adaptation of procedures, methods and development tools (in ongoing development projects)
• Methods and competence requirements for system thinking in model-based system development

Various types of knowledge are generated and processed in the product development process. The challenge in the future will be to do justice to the highly dynamic nature of knowledge and to make knowledge about current manufacturing technologies such as additive manufacturing technologies or new development methods available. At the same time, company-specific knowledge must be made explicit and protected. Knowledge acquisition can often only take place on the basis of unstructured process and product information. The aim of our research is to provide technological and methodological support for the targeted (automated) acquisition and evaluation of knowledge in the product development process and the context-specific provision of process and product knowledge. The focus is on the following research topics:

• Process-oriented identification and evaluation of knowledge artifacts, taking into account company-specific value creation potentials
• Knowledge structuring and access logics based on dynamic structuring and access criteria (adaptive design catalogs)
• Knowledge management using model-based development methods by integrating context information and reusing solution patterns

Product development in value creation networks is characterized by spatially distributed development processes and extensive coordination and communication activities. The aim of our research is to develop virtual product development technologies for improved collaboration and visualization of development results and organization of development activities and to anchor these in the product creation process. The focus is on data-based process control, the collaborative use of model-based development methods and the interactive visualization of process models. The focus is on the following research topics:

• Linking and analyzing project and product information to support task and risk management in distributed development projects
• Strategies for the collaborative creation and analysis of product models in early phases of the development process, focusing on the context of use and overall system design
• Communication of procedures in model-based system development through interactive virtual reality scenes