Cross-disciplinary and Cross-departmental Impacts on Developing Modular Product Families - Current and Future Challenges

This research is based on an industry survey conducted on challenges, influences and potentials in product development through cross-departmental and cross-disciplinary architectures. This paper addresses the second part of the survey, that explicitly addresses the influences of these architectures on the development of modular product families. Different questions posed to a broad group of participants were aimed at considering various challenges, influences and potentials to product development in the context of modular product families. In addition, the identified challenges, influences and potentials were considered in relation to the interactions of different development disciplines (cross-disciplinary) and different product life phases (cross-departmental). By taking a comprehensive look at the different perspectives, added value for the cross-disciplinary and cross-departmental development of modular product families can be identified and further steps towards mapping these structures can be derived.