Collaborative Strategies for Successful Production Technology Development Projects
Paper in proceeding, 2014

Collaborative development between the user and the equipment supplier of production technology has an increasingly important effect in terms of generating innovative, sustainable, and unique production process ideas that can be easily ramped-up to high volume production. However, joint development of production technology is challenging and has received surprisingly limited attention. Against this background the objective of the paper is to explore collaborative challenges from the equipment suppliers and customers’ perspectives in production technology development projects, and to suggest strategies for how these challenges can be addressed. Empirically the results are based on multiple case studies from two manufacturing companies in Sweden (i.e. users) and two equipment suppliers, ensuring that the perspectives of both the user and supplier sides in production technology development projects are considered. Our findings show that the identified collaboration challenges do not only relate to inter-organizational development activities but also to the companies’ internal characteristics, i.e. the prerequisites for company collaboration. Internal characteristics have a clear impact on the ability to bridge the interface with the equipment supplier and thus to advance the collaboration in production technology development projects. Our findings underscore the importance of having intra and inter-organizational strategies to enhance the success related to collaboration in production technology development projects.

process development

production equipment design

inter-organizational collaboration

joint development

buyer-supplier integration

manufacturing industry

Author

Jessica Bruch

Mälardalens högskola

Monica Bellgran

Mälardalens högskola

David Bennett

Chalmers, Technology Management and Economics, Supply and Operations Management

University of South Australia

Hosni Y (Ed) “Science, Technology and Innovation in the Age of Economic, Political and Security Issues”, Proceedings of 23rd International Conference of the International Association for Management of Technology, IAMOT, Miami FL, USA.

paper 1569866687-

Subject Categories

Other Engineering and Technologies

Business Administration

Areas of Advance

Production

More information

Latest update

8/27/2020