Chapter 6: Interoperability

Title: Linking product architecture and network of partners

Author(s): Marc Zolghadri, Claude Baron, Philippe Girard, Michel Aldanondo, Elise Vareilles

Address: IMS-Labs Bordeaux, UMR CNRS 5218, Bordeaux 1 University, 351 Cours de la Liberation, 33405 Talence, France | LESIA-INSA, 135 Avenue de Rangueil, 31077 Toulouse, France | IMS-Labs Bordeaux, UMR CNRS 5218, Bordeaux 1 University, 351 Cours de la Liberation, 33405 Talence, France | Ecole des Mines d|Albi-Carmaux, 81013 Albi, France | Ecole des Mines d|Albi-Carmaux, 81013 Albi, France

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2007 pp. 353 - 362

Abstract/Summary: Conducting locally and globally a network of partners is a hard task for every actor and especially for the company that initiates a product development project which necessitates close collaboration of partners. Some of these difficulties concern the run of the partners' network while others are associated with the run of the project itself and finally others are related to the information asymmetry between various partners (see Arend in [1]). Managers have to cope with them all. But, generally when a difficulty appears it is sourced somewhere else upstream in the process. We focus our study on one of these potential sources which is the product architecture. The idea is to use the product architecture and technical data, even incomplete, to identify the architecture of the network of partners as early as possible during the product development project. It allows clever negotiations and better definition of product & data exchanges protocols between future partners, aiming both at supporting the best the global product development project.

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