| Intense competition in many industries forces manufacturing firms to develop new, higher quality products at an increasingly rapid pace. Overlapping product development activities is an important component of concurrent product development that can help firms to develop products faster. The achievement of simultaneous activities takes place by sharing preliminary information, i.e. not yet finalized. We based our work on the definition of preliminary information from Terwiesch and al. (2002), who distinguishes the precision and the stability of information. Our work has been conducted in a Canadian aerospace manufacturer, where we observed preliminary information exchanges in two cross-functional teams.; To study the preliminary information exchanges in these cross-functional teams, we identified three types of working situations where activities are overlapped. Then, according to the level of stability and precision of preliminary information exchanged, and for each one of these types, we discovered several strategies of preliminary information exchanges, in addition to those approached in the existing literature by Terwiesch and Al (2002). Lastly, we highlighted the role of several factors which support and make the preliminary information exchange easier.; Keywords: Concurrent Engineering, Integrated Product Development, Preliminary Information, Communication, Cross-functional Teams... |
