FORFLOW

BAVARIAN RESEARCH COOPERATION FOR PROCESS- AND WORKFLOW SUPPORT FOR PLANNING AND CONTROLLING PROCEDURES IN THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

The product development takes place in a frame of complex linkages between human, technology, organization and methods. These close and sensitive interdependencies are vulnerable to failures and can result in impasses, development loops and other unpredictable complications on the path from idea to product. The product designers are confronted with the challenge to choose the best and most effective path from a multiplicity of possibilities with intuition, experience and aptitude. The up to now existing tools supporting technical workflow at different stages of product development are neither arbitrarily compatible nor allows definite conclusions about the course of process. Pre-defined and deter- mined sequences which are a characteristic of workflow-management- systems in business processes are neither realizable nor suitable for the creative process of product development. Nevertheless, the creative process does not only run chaotically but also contains fixed procedures and patterns. The aim of the scientists in the Research Cooperation FORFLOW is to describe approaches and decision criteria for these procedures and particularly its intersections in order to develop the concept of a Process Navigator, which supports the engineer step by step in product develop- ment and gives assistance in decision making. The Process Navigator serves to reduce time of development, to make the process more transparently and traceably, to provide knowledge and information suitable to situations and to use existent know-how efficiently. Thus the risk of erroneous trends can be reduced and also the quality of processes and products deeply improved.