Collaborative Strategies for Successful Production Technology Development Projects

Abstract

Collaborative development between the user and the equipment supplier of production technology has an increasingly important effect in terms of generating innovative, sustainable, and unique production process ideas that can be easily ramped-up to high volume production. However, joint development of production technology is challenging and has received surprisingly limited attention. Against this background the objective of the paper is to explore collaborative challenges from the equipment suppliers and customers’ perspectives in production technology development projects, and to suggest strategies for how these challenges can be addressed. Empirically the results are based on multiple case studies from two manufacturing companies in Sweden (i.e. users) and two equipment suppliers, ensuring that the perspectives of both the user and supplier sides in production technology development projects are considered. Our findings show that the identified collaboration challenges do not only relate to inter-organizational development activities but also to the companies’ internal characteristics, i.e. the prerequisites for company collaboration. Internal characteristics have a clear impact on the ability to bridge the interface with the equipment supplier and thus to advance the collaboration in production technology development projects. Our findings underscore the importance of having intra and inter-organizational strategies to enhance the success related to collaboration in production technology development projects.