Understanding Collaborative Interaction for Varying Product Complexity

1. Introduction

It is becoming an increasingly common practice for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) to develop a product collaboratively. In a highly competitive market, there is a growing demand for sophisticated products with multiple product features. Significant interaction among the members of the design team to achieve a commonly shared understanding is critical to the success of any collaborative design session. However, designing such products generally require multidisciplinary expertise and often Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) cannot afford to have multiple experts with them. Consequently, they generally collaborate with outside experts while developing new products. In addition to product development, there are instances where companies need to remotely support their customers through various collaborative means/tools such as phone, email or online live chat. However, choosing such a tool is a difficult decision for an SME as overinvestment may result in a capital loss. Thus, SMEs are unable to afford the expensive collaborative equipment to enable remotely located interactions and often they are confused which systems they should possess. The present work intends to ease this dilemma by suggesting suitable tools for collaborative interaction according to factors such as product complexity.

The shared understanding, in engineering design, has a sustained importance both in research and in the industry (Cash, Dekoninck, & Ahmed-Kristensen, 2017). Additionally, the successful collaborative design also has a long-term impact on the performance of a company (Cash et al., 2017; Eris, Martelaro, & Badke-Schaub, 2014; Tang, Lee, & Gero, 2011) and increases international design activities (Nadja Lee Hansen, Zhang, & Ahmed-Kristensen, 2013). There has been significant work on collaborative design such as (W. D. Li, 2007; W. Li & Shen, 2008; Lu, Li, Case, & Grobler, 2006; Red, French, Jensen, Walker, & Madsen, 2013). However, these works typically focus on the design process and supporting tools (Gül & Maher, 2007; Hrimech & Merienne, 2010; Kleinsmann, 2006; Lomas, Burke, & Page, 2008; Senescu, Haymaker, Meža, & Fischer, 2014). However, using the most complete collaboration technologies for project meetings, although beneficial at first glance, but, not always the best choice ((Duranti & de Almeida, 2012).

In contrast to the above works, the current work investigates the efficacy and utility of basic design platforms on the basis of design complexity. In other words, the present work intends to find out a minimum number of tools required for all the collaborative interactions that are necessary to be carried out in the entire firm. Consequently, unnecessary investing in expensive hardware and software support systems may be prevented which is a sustainable long-term benefit. In addition, rapid information exchange may also reduce the cost (Ostergaard & Summers, 2009) and lead time (Andersson, 2001). During collaborative remotely located, there are several ways in which interactions can take place; Table 1 contains these possible interactions and their corresponding basic tools used in collaborative interactions.