Interdisciplinary teamwork in product development
The task of product development is to create the best possible products with the most varied of features. Due to the wide range of product features, this is not the task of just one department in the company but should be realized in interdisciplinary cooperation.
A company can only successfully implement the required features of a new product if the areas of development, design, production, marketing, sales, purchasing and controlling work together.
In addition to these areas, which must be represented in an interdisciplinary team, it can make sense to also involve customers and suppliers in the development team. The customers thus participate directly in the design of the product. The integration of suppliers can be used to define corresponding supplier components directly. The cooperation essentially concentrates on the selection of suitable components. However, the involvement can go so far that the supplier is given responsibility for the development of individual parts or assemblies and develops them independently. This inevitably results in a close involvement in the company’s development process, since the interfaces to other assemblies or parts must be defined and implemented here.
It’s now common in many companies for larger projects to involve external service providers who then develop individual parts or modules. For your own company, this results in greater flexibility in development capacity, but also in know-how growth. The involvement of different areas in the development process also leads to different ideas of how the new product should ultimately look due to the different perspectives of the employees.
Product development as team work