collaboration

The handling of complex technical changes still is a highly critical process within the industrial practice. Hence, it very often comes to critical scenarios concerning key operating figures like time, product quality or expenses, which troubles the coordinated start of operations or the running of serial production. The aim of the article is to introduce a bundle of methods, which helps to integrate the process- and product views of the different engineering partners, in order to increase transparency and efficiency for the collaborative processing of product changes within engineering networks.

The majority of manufacturing enterprises is currently trying to become more competitive in the preparation of customer-centric and innovative products. The focus of manufacturing paradigm is changing from a mainly sales-driven business towards a provider of utility or benefit to the customer. Consequently, the traditional product definition must be extended. Based on the description of the concept of extended products, this paper discusses approaches to extend the classical product definition and the resulting requirements. Additionally, the role of collaboration in enterprise networks will be discussed. Some practical examples are mentioned.