Analysis of Factors Influencing Knowledge Transfer between the Product and Production System Development as well as Production

The product development process is characterized by accelerating development cycles and increasing customer demands for a wide range of product variants. In addition, it is very knowledge-intensive and characterized by the reuse of knowledge in product generation engineering. Developing new products based on existing references, e.g. knowledge about design parameters or manufacturing technologies, requires effective and efficient transfer of knowledge. In a knowledge transfer, people of different domains, here product and production system development as well as production, make parts of their mental model tangible for others. When doing so, problems can occur that can cause information loss. Knowledge transfer has been reviewed in literature by multiple disciplines and defined differently amongst various understandings of its design. In this work, knowledge transfer includes the identification, transmission, and application of knowledge and thus addresses the problem of distributing knowledge within a company. To optimize knowledge transfer within the product engineering process to reduce information loss and knowledge deficits, factors that impact knowledge transfer must be considered. ... mehrTherefore, this contribution examines factors that either influence the knowledge transfer positively or negatively, especially between product and production system development as well as production. In addition to a literature-based identification of influencing factors, a qualitative study interviewing experts in those fields enhances the findings. Furthermore, the collection of factors was assigned to four clusters: people, organization, technology, and knowledge and transfer. By linking the factors of each cluster, a model was created to be able to investigate the impact of changing factors within and between clusters providing a basis for closing knowledge deficits to enable effective and efficient knowledge transfer.