The hottest networked collaborative product innova

Networked collaborative product innovation and development helps the automotive industry take off

1 Introduction

in today's global competition and the continuous improvement of product complexity, product innovation and design can obtain more lasting competitive advantages for enterprises, while collaboration creates value. Collaborative product innovation and development is an enabling tool for enterprises to realize networked manufacturing, mass customization strategy and globalization strategy. Precision, digitalization, networking, virtualization, intelligence and integration are important features of modern product development technology. Collaborative product development based on network environment across time and space, enterprises and disciplines is becoming an inevitable development trend of product development organization mode. The content of collaboration has also developed from business activities based on supply chain to collaborative product development process based on development activities

China's manufacturing industry, especially the modern automobile industry, is an industry that involves the collaborative production of knowledge in a wide range of fields. It is a highly technology intensive industry and the carrier of many high and new technologies today. The research and development of new products is the core of automotive industry technology. While pursuing innovation, integrating science and technology, and realizing humanized design, it seeks to take the lead in the competition, A way to quickly reflect market changes. After more than ten years of rapid development, China 7. According to the degree of automation, the comprehensive technical level of the automotive industry, including manual fixture, pneumatic fixture, electric fixture and hydraulic fixture, has been greatly improved. Closely following the international automotive development trend, computer and information technology have been more and more widely used in the design and development of new automotive products. However, with the merger and reorganization of major automobile companies at home and abroad, the variability of customer demand and the intensification of market competition, the design and development of automobile products not only need a large amount of information transmission within the enterprise, but also need a wide range of information transmission outside the enterprise. An effective way to solve this problem is to combine advanced management concepts with information technology through process integration to realize information interaction and collaboration between various stages of product development process, as well as between product development and other processes downstream of product life cycle. It is also conducive to rapid response to market opportunities, rapid organization of human and material resources, development of new products with high quality and low cost, and win market competition

2 problems and challenges faced by the innovative development of automotive products under the network environment

the research, development, design, manufacturing, management, marketing and service of new products under the network environment are no longer limited to a city, a region or even a country. At the same time, mergers and acquisitions among enterprises have become the inevitable result of fierce competition, which makes the scale of enterprises expand sharply, and their internal production, management and decision support systems are diverse, and the exchange of information and knowledge between systems has become a bottleneck. Moreover, with the improvement of the complexity and technical content of current products, a single enterprise is often limited by technology and resources, and is not competent for the whole process of product development. In addition, as a part of the product life cycle, product development inevitably shows the characteristics of enterprise cooperation. Product development, especially the development of complex products, increasingly adopts the way of multi enterprise cooperation, sharing benefits and risks. All these require that we must break the constraints of traditional enterprise boundaries, explore the problems that need to be solved in inter enterprise collaboration, and provide solutions to support the smooth progress of collaboration while examining the enterprise itself

the problems and challenges faced by the product innovation and development of China's automotive industry mainly include the following aspects:

a) compared with general industrial products, automotive products are more complex

compared with general industrial products, the complexity of automotive products is shown in the complexity of customer needs, system composition, product technology, manufacturing process and project management. The research and development of automotive products involves the cross coupling of multidisciplinary knowledge. Product development should not only reflect the integration of mechanics, kinematics and dynamics disciplines that general products should have, but also reflect their integrity and systematicness, and position at the intersection of multidisciplinary disciplines such as thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, materials science, aesthetics, control theory, modern management technology, advanced manufacturing technology, computer science, complex morphology dynamics, etc, Therefore, it brings great challenges to product development. Due to the complexity of automotive products, the development of such products is a complex system, involving a large number of data, models, tools, processes and personnel. How to effectively organize and manage the development of products, and realize enterprise information integration, process integration and optimized operation is the key to the success of product development

b) the core advantage units and internal R & D centers are geographically dispersed

the units with vehicle R & D capabilities are scattered in many cities in China, and the R & D centers of each unit are also dispersed geographically. The communication and cooperation between enterprises are mainly through, e-mail, and irregular project meetings. Such communication is inefficient. Sometimes a small design problem needs to be solved face-to-face by relevant experts. Therefore, it is of great practical significance and good application prospects to develop a multidisciplinary automotive product collaborative development system in a distributed environment

c) product research and development work is completed by multiple units

due to the complexity of automotive product research and development, it is necessary to comprehensively apply multidisciplinary knowledge. It is usually difficult for an enterprise to complete the whole task independently, and the research and development work generally involves multiple enterprises and units. For example, the design of the car body is completed in one R & D center, the test analysis of the design results is carried out in another R & D center, and the process and manufacturing are transferred to a third manufacturer. In the heterogeneous distributed development environment, it is difficult to maintain the complex relationship of product data, lack of effective data distribution and update support, etc

d) the research and development process still mainly adopts the pyramid structure in depth

the automobile R & D process is usually participated by multiple enterprises and departments. Generally, the automobile is divided according to its structure and function, and each enterprise undertakes part of it, and then organizes and develops it separately. The whole development process basically adopts the units in the previous link to complete the task, and then pass the results to the participating units in the next link. If the unit in the next link finds problems, it will feed back to the previous link. Due to the relative independence of participating in the organizational management and operation mode of enterprises, the cooperation between enterprises is still a simple relationship between supply and demand, and there is little communication with other enterprises in the working process of an enterprise. In essence, this working method is still a slender pyramid structure

e) the proportion of multi variety and small batch products has increased, and the delivery time has become the main competitive factor

multi variety and small batch production is the current development trend of the automotive industry. The traditional relatively stable market has evolved into a dynamic and variable market. The development trend of the modern market is mainly reflected in the strengthening of customer demand personalization, the shortening of product delivery time and life cycle, and the improvement of product cost performance. However, the biggest challenge it faces is the speed and cost of enhancing its ability to deal with trade protectionism, Networked product collaborative development system is the most effective means to reduce the cost of product development and design stage and shorten the product launch cycle [3]

f) the task division between cooperative enterprises takes function as the core, and the information interaction is poor

the participation of multiple enterprises makes the requirements for information exchange and sharing in the process of vehicle research and development very high. However, because enterprises are generally divided according to functional departments, and tasks are divided according to functions, there is little information exchange between enterprises, or even between functional departments within enterprises, and the relationship between functions cannot be reflected. For example, the unit responsible for the body design task will only consider the realization of the functional requirements of the body, and will not consider whether the structure is easy to maintain, how the parts are manufactured, how the manufacturability and assembly are. It rarely considers whether the manufacturing cost of the products after the end of the whole manufacturing process is low, whether the manufacturing cycle will be long, and whether the products manufactured are the products required by customers

g) there are many single technology studies, and the application of systematic technology is not enough

automobile R & D process from conceptual design to general layout design, detailed structural design, test verification to final product. In the whole process, many single technologies have been studied, such as digital modeling and pre assembly technology, process digital design, computer-aided technology CAX, digital measurement technology, and project management technology of manufacturing process, but most of them are aimed at a certain link in the development process, and the integration of the whole development process has not been formed

3 networked collaborative product innovation and development based on process chain

future manufacturing is based on integrated and intelligent agile manufacturing and "global" and "networked" manufacturing, and the global market competition environment forces enterprises to adopt the corresponding product development mode, and cross enterprise collaboration is becoming more and more important, The content of collaboration has also developed from business activities based on supply chain to collaborative product development process based on development activities. The new product development strategy is to establish the adjustment loop of information processing to improve parallelism and speed up decision-making, so as to achieve the purpose of improving production efficiency

the product development process chain is a dynamic virtual organization, which provides a reliable product description for new product development strategies. Its formation process is based on market demand driven, faces all stages of the development process, takes the product as the core to organize and manage product development activities, takes the development goal as the link, and takes the whole process of collaborative product development as the main line, It tries to cover all the relevant factors in the product development life cycle, such as the development members, the new development mode and the philosophy of production and manufacturing, so as to realize the generalized synergy in the sense of the whole life cycle. When the enterprise catches the new market demand, it can cooperate with relevant cooperative enterprises and departments to form a product development chain, develop and produce corresponding products to meet this demand, and solve the problems of how to ensure the collaboration of multiple enterprises and effective information exchange and interaction between enterprises in the process of new product development; Break the traditional pyramid structure divided by departments, establish a networked organizational structure conducive to integrated product development, and organize and manage virtual development teams according to development needs; Solve the problems of diversified product varieties, various data types, diverse development methods and design modes, and chaotic product development process; Improve the ability of enterprises to respond to market demand in the product development environment of customization (order oriented assembly and order oriented manufacturing). So as to achieve the purpose of shortening market response time, reducing costs, reducing development feedback, and increasing product development ability, and can obtain rich economic profits while establishing a harmonious collaborative product development environment for enterprises

4 conclusion

the common problem faced by enterprises at present is how to improve product development ability, and constantly summarize and explore advanced product development concepts from practice. Modern product development process is not only a product design problem, but a system engineering that integrates the knowledge, process, resources and personnel in various related fields of products. It has the characteristics of systematization, integration, distribution, heterogeneity and collaboration. therefore