A QFD based methodology for evaluating a company’s PDM requirements for collaborative product development
| Published date | 01 April 2001 |
| Pages | 126-132 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635570110386634 |
| Date | 01 April 2001 |
| Author | Rajeev Kumar,P.S. Midha |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
A QFD based methodology for evaluating a company's
PDM requirements for collaborative product
development
Rajeev Kumar
Faculty of Engineering, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
P.S. Midha
Faculty of Engineering, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
PDM enables the sharing of information
among members of a team within the
enterprise and beyond, to include members
of an extended enterprise. Product
development process is normally an iterative
activity. There is a continuous learning
process that the product development team
goes through during the product life cycle.
Learning from past mistakes and using the
past successes as the starting point for future
designs are critical factors for achieving a
high quality, robust and innovative product
(Weibe, 1997). Maintenance of previous
design histories is thus critical for creating a
better product in the future. PDM systems
help in maintaining almost the entire
product related information in an easily
accessible form.
PDM systems have been around since the
early 1980s and are being used not only for
sharing of information within an enterprise,
but also in an extended enterprise to include
partners, suppliers and contractors. With the
widespread use of Internet technologies,
increasingly the terms CPC (collaborative
product commerce) and cPDM (collaborative
product definition management) are also
being used in place of PDM. According to the
Aberdeen Group (www.aberdeen.com) ``CPC
defines a class of software and services that
uses Internet technologies ± no matter what
role they have in the commercialisation of a
product, no matter what computer-based
tools they use, no matter where they are
located geographically or within the supply
net ± to collaboratively develop, build and
manage products throughout their entire
lifecycle''. CIMdata Inc. (www.cimdata.com)
defines cPDM ``as a strategic business
approach; applying a consistent set of
business solutions to collaboratively manage
the product definition lifecycle across the
extended enterprise''. In both the definitions
the main stress is on the word collaboration.
With an increased adoption of the
collaborative product development approach
and multi-enterprise partnering to create
superior products, companies need to
reorganise and re-engineer their business
processes to succeed. PDM systems can help
in achieving these objectives by acting as
glue that binds an organisation together.
Product data management and
collaborative product development
In the 1990s, the manufacturers have had to
respond to the demands of the customers by
replacing single products with a flexible
range. This requires combining flexibility
with predictability with a view to achieving
mass customisation. Mass customisation
assumes a high level ability on the part of the
manufacturer to store and manipulate a huge
mass of product data (Aarons, 1995).
To reduce the product development time as
well as the cost of bringing a new product to
the market, the traditional approach of
sequential product development is being
increasingly replaced by the collaborative
(simultaneous) product development
approach. The collaborative product
development approach demands a multi-
disciplinary approach and organisations
need to draw together representatives from
all the areas of the enterprise and also
include the suppliers who lie outside the
enterprise. In an environment like this, some
of the critical issues faced by the companies
are (Carter and Baker, 1992; Nau et al., 1994)
as follows:
.Understanding the customer needs and
developing a product to meet those needs.
.Database models and systems that
facilitate integrated problem solving
(most importantly by geographically
dispersed enterprise/partners).
.User interfaces that enable the user to
analyse, evaluate and enhance the options
suggested by a computer software and to
make intelligent decisions.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available
at
http://www.emerald-library.com/ft
[ 126 ]
Industrial Management &
Data Systems
101/3 [2001] 126±131
#MCB University Press
[ISSN 0263-5577]
Keywords
Product development,
Database management,
Qualify function deployment,
Simultaneous engineering
Abstract
CAD, CAM, CAE and CIM systems
with their ability to quickly
generate and change product data
have strained the conventional
systems used to manage data. As
a result, the time spent by an
engineer in looking for the right
information far exceeds the time
spent on the actual design work. A
product data management system
is a tool that helps engineers and
others manage both data and the
product development process, and
hence support a concurrent
engineering framework in a
company. Although PDM systems
provide numerous benefits to a
company, there are problems
associated with firstly identifying
an appropriate system for a
company and then in its
implementation. For a successful
implementation of a PDM system
it is important for a company to
first evaluate its requirements.
This paper proposes a QFD (quality
function deployment) based
methodology for evaluating a
company's current status
vis-aÁ-vis PDM implementation.
To continue reading
Request your trial