Abstract
In our previous paper [1], we discussed the importance of visualizing the “intent” information of planners and designers from the perspective of process design, considering our entire business as a support measure to accurately grasp the actual conditions of the products, services, and site. The concept of Himozuke (strong association between the two elements and supporting factors for the association) was presented as a means to visualize “intent” information and the “Design Map” method was used as a common platform for sharing the actual situation of products, services, and site of the company's business between the management and site levels. In addition, a case study showed that this concept and method can be utilized in the period from product development to launch using concrete products as examples. We also examined the utilization of the aforementioned concept and method by going back to upstream development, that is, the fuzzy front-end (FFE) model, in which the direction of development is determined in a crowded situation; it also shows a case in which the gap of “intent” information between the management level, which determines the direction of development, and the site level, which produces products, caused the improvement of core competence in the business to stagnate. In other words, the explicit knowledge transformation of “intent” information at both levels is important for the development of the business, and the proposed method is effective. Finally, we also proposed the “extended FFE model” to consider cooperation with the external environment such as production facilities when the reform of manufacturing is accelerating and examined the diversity of this model from the perspective of inter-organizational relations.
