How Collaboration Between Industrial Designers and Other Members Related to Product Development Affect Innovation and Efficiency

: Interdepartmental collaboration is considered to be critical to innovation and efficiency. This paper differentiated industrial design (ID) and engineering design (ED), which differ in their nature and are handled by different departments, and reviews in the literature on the impact that interdepartmental collaboration among industrial designers and other areas involved in product development has on innovation and efficiency. We found that: (1) regarding innovation, interdepartmental collaboration has a positive effect on design innovation, and CE type interdepartmental collaboration has a positive effect on technology innovation. (2) Regarding efficiency, we found that the effect on the efficiency of the product development process was not consistent, and production efficiency was not looked into in prior research.


Introduction
Looking at changes in consumer preferences, we can see that buying decisions are becoming more susceptible to emotional needs and desires (Czarnitzki & Thorwarth, 2012) and that putting products with a design focus on the market is a factor in competitive advantage (Nobeoka, 2006). This study therefore addresses the design stage part of product development.
Research on design management proves that innovation and efficiency are key to performance (Dickson, Schneier, Lawrence, & Hytry, 1995), and design research and product development research proves that interdepartmental collaboration is key to innovation and efficiency. However, in the context of management, the term "design" can mean many different things, and these differences have complicated ongoing research on design (Verganti, 2008). Most articles discuss the topic without differentiating between design as a "sketch made during the design stage" and design as "a blueprint made during the product engineering stage." In product development, the person who draws the sketch is usually not the same person who draws the blueprint, and the departments in charge of these tasks are different as well. The art of designing a sketch is considered to require individual skill and does not take well to organizational efforts (Hemonnet-Goujot, Manceau, & Abecassis-Moedas, 2019; Kanki & Osanai, 2018). Thus, both being regarded as design in the broad sense is problematic (Hertenstein, Platt, & Veryzer, 2005). This paper therefore classifies design in the broad sense as (A) industrial design (ID), which determines the form of an industrial product and (B) engineering design (ED), which designs product functions (Kanki & Osanai, 2018). Upon differentiating the natures of ID and ED, we classify the types of interdepartmental collaboration, and based on these classifications, we investigate how innovation and efficiency were affected in prior research, identify the research gaps in current design research, and indicate directions for future research.

Type of Collaborations
ID is part of the product development process. It is also related to product aesthetics, user friendliness, manufacturability, the efficient use of materials, and product performance (Gemser & Leenders, 2001). Instead of calling it ID, some studies call decisions about a product's color, materials, form, and size parameters "product form design" (PFD) (Rindova & Petkova, 2007), and others call the aesthetic and symbolic choices about the combination of a product's traits "style" (Cappetta, Cillo, & Ponti, 2006), but this paper regards PFD and style as being the same as ID.
As shown in Figure 1, the product development process takes place in a flow from (1) the product concept to (2) product planning to (3) product engineering to (4) process engineering to (5) manufacturing (Clark & Fujimoto, 1991). The areas responsible for the various steps differ from company to company, but they are usually as follows (Takeda, 2000): (1) Product concept stage: Those in charge of creating the product concept in the marketing department or elsewhere formulate a product concept based on market data, technological information and other such criteria.
(2) Product planning stage: Designers (IDs) and others execute the styling, which incorporates the specific elements of the product concept.
(3) Product engineering stage: Based on the product plan, EDs create ED, build prototypes and run it through repeated tests.
Here, the collaborative models in (ii) are roughly divided into: (a) the sequential model, in which the departments act in sequence, and (b) the overlapping model, CE, and front-loading, which proceed with  (2000) Collaboration between industrial designers and other members related to product development a number of activities simultaneously, by which those in charge of product development collaborate in the product development process from the beginning, and in which problems are solved preemptively. Here in (a) the sequential model, ID, ED, and manufacturing are split up and performed sequentially, and communication flows in one direction, with the output of the problem solving done by the upstream departments flowing as input to the downstream departments (Takeda, 2000) In contrast, in overlapping model (b), the downstream process starts before the upstream processes are finished (Takeda, 2000). CE is a similar concept (Itohisa, 2009). Here, marketing, product engineering, process engineering, manufacturing plans, and supply activities overlap, and the product development people are involved from the beginning and are part of the interdepartmental team (Koufteros, Vonderembse, & Doll, 2001). In the overlapping model, front-loading (Thomke & Fujimoto, 2000) is possible. Front-loading is defined as "a strategy that seeks to improve development performance by shifting the identification and solving of ED problems to earlier phases of a product development process," and it is achieved through knowledge transfer among projects and quick problem solving.
In the following, we focus on and identify two types of interdepartmental collaborations with regard to innovation and efficiency, which are considered key to performance: (i) collaboration between ID and other departments and (ii) post-ED collaboration.

Effects on Innovation
As it is said that having a dominant ID gives a competitive advantage to a firm (Akiike, 2017), the importance of design innovation is being acknowledged. This paper therefore discusses innovation in terms of (1) design innovation and (2)

(1) Design innovation
Design innovation means creating an additional external layer to technology innovation (Fjaellegaard, Beukel, & Alkaersig, 2019;Rindova & Petkova, 2007) or creating a superior product by integrating technology innovation and design innovation (Fjaellegaard et al., 2019). It refers to giving new meaning to new products that have been created by changing a product's aesthetic  (2013), Koufteros, Vonderembse, and Doll (2001), and Yoshioka (2018) qualities through reallocating the social meaning of an existing product (Cappetta et al., 2006). (2013)  Also, Hara, Hirasaka, and Tatsumoto (2019), in a network analysis using data on design patents, found that when a product group was aiming for a coherent design, the designer, engineer, and manager maintained a very close network to facilitate the transmission of tacit knowledge, which enabled design innovativeness and brand coherence. Thus, this showed that collaboration between designers and other departments can lead to the simultaneous achievement of both design innovation and brand coherence.

3) Relationship between design innovation and technology innovation
Although design innovation is considered to be endogenous to technology innovation, the correlation between design innovation and technology innovation has not been adequately investigated, so it is not clear how interdepartmental collaboration affects this correlation. Cappetta et al. (2006)

Effects on Efficiency
(1) How collaboration between ID and others related to product development affect productivity Hertenstein et al. (2005) defines the role of the ID as coordinating with other departments and working to achieve prompt agreement within the product development team regarding product design that has good production efficiency, but this investigation did not address how to improve production efficiency.
(2) How collaboration between IDer and others related to product development affect efficiency of the product development process The research findings are divided into whether the process becomes more efficient or more inefficient.
The product development process is also called the design process. 1 Based on prior research, Chiva-Gomez (2004) identifies four design management activities that improve the efficiency of the product development process: (1) stronger relations between members within the company and from outside; (2) the development of interdepartmental relations within the product development process, (3) maximization of information flows, and (4) the encouragement of heterogeneous participation in design decision making. Also, based on a quantitative study, Zhang, Hu, and Kotabe (2011) found that collaboration between industrial designers and marketing can result in a more efficient product development process.
Meanwhile, Perks, Cooper, and Jones (2005) argue that collaboration between industrial designers and other departments makes the product development process more inefficient instead. Using a qualitative analysis, they classify the role of the industrial designer into three types: (1) the functionally specialized designer, (2) the designer as part of a multifunctional team, and (3) the designer as a new product development (NPD) leader. They showed that the designer who belongs to a multifunctional team collaborates with other functions through the product development process and may be involved in building prototypes and manufacturing. Although this type was achieving radical product development as a result of creativity provided by external designers, it took time for external designers to be integrated into the team, so overall product development efficiency was low.
As for whether the impact of collaboration between industrial designers and other departments on the efficiency of the product development process is positive or negative, this will have to be addressed in a more detailed study in the future. Another future research topic is the effect on production efficiency.
(3) Collaboration between ED and later stages of product development improves efficiency of the product development process and productivity when using overlapping model and front-loading Thomke and Fujimoto (2000) showed that the product development process becomes more efficient when front-loading is used to identify and resolve design problems in the early stages of the product development process. Also, Clark and Fujimoto (1991) assert that front-loading of the problem discovery and resolution cycle in consideration of problems that occur in the downstream area of development makes it possible to resolve manufacturability problems. Using case studies, Itohisa (2012) argues that when the overlapping model of problem solving cannot ensure the robustness of information in upstream processes, downstream processes may become inefficient due to repeated revisions of processes, but if frontloading takes place, the information about upstream processes becomes robust, making the overall performance improve. Furthermore, Itohisa points out, manufacturability problems are resolved through overlapping model problem solving.
The foregoing is summed up in Figure 3. Regarding efficiency, we know that the product development process and production efficiency will improve depending on the state  Clark and Fujimoto (1991), Hara, Hirasaka, and Tatsumoto (2019), Itohisa (2012), Kanno and Shibata (2013), Koufteros, Vonderembse, and Doll (2001), Perks, Cooper, and Jones (2005), Thomke and Fujimoto (2000), Yoshioka (2018), and Zhang, Hu, and Kotabe (2011 of post-ED collaboration, but in the case of interdepartmental collaboration between industrial designers and other departments, (1) the impact on the efficiency of the product development process is not consistent, so additional research needs to be pursued on the topic. 2 (2) Prior research did not look into production efficiency, so research needs to be performed on whether IDs, who are of a different nature than EDs, can, for instance, improve production efficiency by overlapping.