Product development has transitioned to a global endeavor for many industries with products being increasingly broken down into parts, each created in multiple centers around the globe, then brought back together for integration and testing. This transition has vastly changed the landscape for manufacturers who must maintain cohesive, unified operations that continue to drive growth and innovation in order to compete in today’s brutally competitive markets.
Product development in nearly every industry is now a globally collaborative activity with skilled engineering teams dispersed geographically developing products in a collaborative manner. Factors driving this trend include: growing competitive pressures, the availability of strong talent overseas, better digital collaboration and communication tools, and emergence of new growing markets overseas.
Global manufacturers must develop and implement best practices that enable them to deploy coordinated product development strategies that must span timelines, language barriers and global borders. The touted benefits of globalized product development include greater engineering efficiency as a result of lower-cost resources; access to international technical expertise; new global markets for products; and more flexible resource allocation through outsourcing. Transitioning existing processes and practices, however, leads to a host of strategic and tactical issues that companies must overcome before successfully deploying globalized product development (GPD). Let’s take a look at a few of these issues:
Intellectual property (IP). Sharing valuable product data, designs and technologies outside the company makes protecting IP more challenging. Companies must define products and processes in a modular structure to help protect IP.
Process methodology. Companies must develop a methodology to delegate tasks to different global centers. When a remote location is involved in work that is part of a larger task, there must be a process in place that breaks down the task into clear steps, determines what steps are done by each center, then reconfigures the process to enable the necessary handoffs, reviews and approvals.
Product modularity. Often complete subsystems or components are outsourced to design teams at another location. Modular product architectures can facilitate the global coordination of these products. Clearly defined interfaces between modules facilitate their separate development and eventual integration into the final product.
Data integrity. Data in a global organization must be distributed between multiple, often geographically dispersed locations. When each location uses their own unique tools and databases, data availability, accessibility, and auditability all become key issues. In order to maintain data integrity throughout the global organization, best practices for both data and file management must be established. In addition, one design system or database must be recognized as the parent system and all users need to understand the impact of changes they make to the source data.
Organizational change management. Some of the most challenging issues in GPD are those involving individuals’ roles, behaviors and the new skills required of them. Careful planning, training and education should all be allocated for those individuals who will play critical roles in making GPD work.
Overcoming the Challenges
The transition to GPD must incorporate new ways to collaborate among teams and individuals across times zones, languages, cultures and companies, and these differences must be taken into account from the outset. Manufacturers must take a systematic approach that addresses all three major components of GPD: process, people, and technology.
A key enabler to success in GPD seems to hinge on standardization, in both tools and processes. Design teams in lower-cost regions might not have the expertise on or access to the same level of high-end design tools used in the U.S. and other high-cost regions. Key management must be able to establish standardized product development tools with which new products are designed as well as standardized and documented processes. Standardizing processes and tools from the outset of GPD efforts helps drive compliance and effective methodology.
Product lifecycle management (PLM) systems can help manufacturers establish open and secure digital environments for product development that protects IP and enables all distributed design teams to access the most up-to-date design data. PLM systems also enable manufacturers to keep track of all of the processes and tasks—regardless of what group is doing them or where they are—at each state of the product development cycle as well as tracking and managing engineering changes so everyone can see the impact of changes. With the right standardized tools and processes in place, manufacturers can drive greater efficiencies, growth and innovation through successful GPD.
Is your company involved with GPD and if so,
what are some of the challenges it faces?
