Abstract:As research topics become increasingly complex, large scale interdisciplinary research projects are commonly established to foster cross-disciplinary cooperation and to utilize potential synergies. In the case of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1026, 19 individual projects from different disciplines are brought together to investigate perspectives and solutions for sustainable manufacturing. Beside overheads regarding the coordination of activities and communication, such interdisciplinary projects are also facing challengs regarding data management. For exchange and combination of research results, data from individual projects have to be stored systematically, categorized, and linked according to the logical interrelations of the involved disciplinary knowledge domains. In the CRC 1026, the project for information infrastructure observed and analysed collaboration practices and developed IT-supported solutions to facilitate and foster research collaboration. Data management measures in this period were mainly focused on building a shared conceptual framework, and the organization of task related data. For the former aspect, an ontology basesd apporach was developed and prototypically implemented. For the latter aspect, a message board integrated task management system was developed and applied.
Intense collaboration within networks of stakeholders characterizes current engineering design processes. In these, engineers use IT systems to create artifacts, which manifest their knowledge allowing its circulation. Still, a research gap exists regarding the understanding of kinds, relations and interdependencies between IT systems, artifacts and knowledge types. This article addresses this gap by presenting results of a systematic literature review. The results contribute to close the mentioned gap, give insight on focusses of current research and identify further need for investigations.
Knowledge is a crucial factor in state-of-the-art product development. It is often provided by stakeholders from divers disciplinary and individual backgrounds and has to be integrated to create competitive products. Still, it is not fully understood, how knowledge is generated, transformed, transferred and integrated in complex product development processes. To investigate the dynamic interrelations between involved stakeholders, applied knowledge types and related artefacts, researchers at the TU Berlin conducted and evaluated a student experiment to study basic phenomena of development projects. In relation to research methods and instruments applied in this experiment, various improvement opportunities were identified. In this paper, the experimental setting and its results are critically analysed from a social science perspective in order to generate improved research design. Based on the results of this analysis, a first set of methods and instruments from social sciences are identified that can be applied in further experiments. The goal is to develop a methodological toolbox that can be used to approach research on knowledge dynamics in product development.
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