Analysing collaborative practices in design to support project managers

Abstract

The subject of the current paper is the collaborative practices used in the product development process in SMEs (small and medium enterprises). The starting point is an empirical study, part of industry-based fieldwork on the introduction of a product lifecycle management (PLM) system. Our results highlight the need for new approaches to take into account the socio-technical complexity of the collaborative processes. A new tool named CoCa is proposed to analyse collaborative practices in situ. This tool is designed to be used by researchers, consultants or, eventually, project managers in order to track all the collaborative events and the project context. The background and industrial case study, the theoretical basis and design of the tool are described and, finally, some indication is given of its potential use in gaining understanding of complex collaborative processes and in improving design coordination.

Keywords:

• Product design engineering
• Design coordination
• Collaboration in design
• Project management
• Human factors
• Process identification