KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN COLLABORATIVE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

摘要

An increasing amount of main suppliers are using sub-suppliers to perform different tasks in the product development process. As a result, the knowledge needed for developing a new product will be distributed throughout many actors. Knowledge management is a comprehensive term for providing the right piece of knowledge to the right persons at the right time. This paper deals mainly with the question for how knowledge is managed in the collaborative product development between main and sub-suppliers (system level). The result is based on a case study with one main supplier and ten of their sub-suppliers, in which the main suppler develops, assembles, and delivers a whole, complex product to the customer. The study shows that the sub-suppliers' knowledge and experiences are not fully utilized in the relationship with the main supplier. Some different ways of working are discussed in the paper's conclusions section, to improve the knowledge exchange between main and sub-suppliers.