Production – as seen in product development : A theoretical review of how established product development process models address the production system

It is a well-known fact that collaboration between design and production during product development is a critical success factor. Literature on product development have described many different product development processes (PDP), but engineering students are in general only taught one or a few of the existing models. Given this, it is interesting to investigate how established (and often used) PDP models address production and the development of the production system, since this could influence the presumptions of engineers in industry as well as academic researchers (who in general have been engineering students before pursuing an academic career). In this paper, the authors have reviewed seven established and commonly used (in mechanical engineering education and/or research) PDP models, with respect to how the models address the production system and its development. The models are reviewed with respect to what the PDP model describe as the content of the PDP, inclusion of the development of the production system in the model, the presentation of support tools for production related activities, the level of references or mentioning of production system development theories, the visibility of data transfer needs between product and production system development and the strategic role of production in product development. This analysis shows that production system development is mentioned less in more recent literature but is generally scarcely described. Design for manufacturing and design for assembly tools have been added to more recent literature, which might be a way of managing the decreased inclusion of production system development. Finally, an outline for future research efforts on the topic is presented