A Novel Meta-Design Stage for Collaborative Product Design

Meta-Design is an additional stage of the product design process which has been defined by this research. It is particularly relevant to collaborative design processes where multiple companies, are working together on a design project. The meta-design stage is led by the project manager and involves as many team members as possible. It consists of a number of steps, during which decisions are made on: the method of data sharing; the way the product is split between partners, and the interfaces between those modules; the international standards and terminology to be adopted; the way in which new partners will be identified; the reporting structure for responding to unpredicted external events; the response procedures for events which are know to be possible, but unlikely. Adopting Pahl & Beitz’s [1] model for engineering design, the meta-design stage is conducted after the gathering of customer requirements and before any conceptual design. 2. Why? In recent years collaboration between companies has become more widespread; co-operation with global partners [2, 3] is now increasingly common. This is due in part to a shift away from vertical integration, and towards a more specialised set of core competences within individual organisations, allowing them to develop partnerships with complementary businesses if required. This collabora