A methodology to facilitate knowledge sharing in the new product development process

Abstract

This paper describes the findings of an exploratory case study to investigate knowledge sharing problems in the new product development (NPD) process of a multi-national manufacturing company, and classifies the problems into three categories, i.e. (a) the lack of an explicit definition and prioritization of information about the knowledge used in the NPD process, (b) the challenges raised by, and lack of tools to support, knowledge sharing in a multilingual, multidisciplinary environment, and (c) the dissemination of information about the task and process knowledge to process users. An ontology-based methodology has been proposed, and a pilot study has been carried out to solve these problems. The pilot study includes the selection of suitable candidate tasks (or sub-processes) for the study, the elicitation of information about the selected task knowledge, the development of task knowledge ontology, and a mechanism to visualize and disseminate the ontology to process users. Early implementation and tests have shown that the proposed methodology may be used to facilitate knowledge sharing in the new product development process. The project was sponsored by a leading heating system manufacturer and further tests will be carried out with real industrial problems.

Keywords:

• Knowledge sharing
• New product development
• Multilingual
• Ontology
• Business process

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the EPSRC in conducting this research. They would also like to thank Ms Alexandra Brintrup and Mr Alvaro Camrillo for their contribution to the early stages of the company-based research project and knowledge audit study.