An empirical investigation of the impacts of cooperation tools on the product development performance in the automotive industry

Several empirical studies showed that a greater cooperation between the product development stakeholders has a positive impact on the product development performance and on the product's commercial success. Developing products in a cooperative manner may therefore help firms to improve their competitiveness and increase their market shares. Today, the cooperation issue is still at the at the top of manufacturing firms' agenda as they are confronted with an environment where topics such as time to market reduction, cost reduction, development of innovative and differentiated products, integration of a growing number of customers and legal requirements, or the reliance on dispersed teams are more and more present. For all these aforementioned topics, cooperation plays a major role.; Since a few years ago, new cooperation technologies such as 3D visualisation, desktop conferencing, or Internet-based applications have emerged and they may help firms to address some of the aforementioned challenges or leverage them to enable new business processes. This study deals with the application of these advanced cooperation tools in product development teams. The main objectives were to find out the benefits of these new technologies and if additional capabilities could be gained (e.g. ability to work in a virtual manner). More precisely, the objectives of this study were to (i) find out how to implement and embed these new technologies in product development teams in an industrial environment, (ii) evaluate the impacts of cooperation tools and some organisational mechanisms on the product development performance, and (iii) examine the factors facilitating the adoption of the cooperation tools.; This study was divided into two main phases. First, advanced cooperation tools facilitating cooperation in virtual and multidisciplinary product development teams were implemented. The implementation consisted in defining and deploying these new cooperation tools and the associated new routines (or work patterns) in product development teams. Four product development teams participated in pilot projects. At the end of this first phase, a conceptual model was defined. In the second phase, a survey was conducted with the members of product development teams that used the collaboration tools to assess and validate the conceptual model. A total of sixty-one respondents originating from Bosch and other firms in the German automotive industry participated in the survey. The automotive sector has some interesting characteristics such as heavy reliance on dispersed teams, development of complex products or high competitive pressure and therefore was a good field to study the computer-based cooperation phenomenon in product development teams. This study is also relevant for other manufacturing firms that are taking part in product development projects involving multidisciplinary participants and several organisations. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...