A Study of Open Research & Production Process on the Case of Robot

Abstract

We investigated the R&D process of a robot in order to study the communication process between the end-user and the developing firm and to analyzed the information communicated in the process. We find that the information necessary for the product development under the collaboration between customer and firm are 1) product image, 2) function specification, and 3) common knowledge base. Also we find that 1) the information about product image can be transmitted on line, but the on-line communication of the function specification is difficult when the user and the firm do not have enough common knowledge.