Manufacturing Technology Management for Product Design and Manufacturing Cooperation

Abstract

One of the most important issues on the technology management in Japanese manufacturer is establishing methodologies for efficient cooperation between product design and manufacturing, thereby realizing competitive product development with high performance, high quality, low cost and short lead-time simultaneously. In this paper, efficient information transfers and flexible activities between two sections are discussed by analyzing actual successful activities in Japanese manufacturers. Then, as management tools, unit and chain models of the cooperation are proposed to analyze key factors for success of cooperation.