ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION

Product innovations and the competence to innovate are key success factors for any industrial enterprise. When looking inside product development departments, time, cost and quality are generally the predominant goals, which are then targeted by the engineering environment comprised of organizational measures, business processes, methods, and supporting IT systems. Innovation seems to be left the role of an appreciated side-effect. This paper investigates how an engineering environment should be designed in order to foster innovation. What should - against this background - be the interplay between processes, methods and IT? Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a concept often promoted for product development to address both time/cost/quality and innovation. This paper gives advice on how PLM is to be understood and set up to achieve this with best possible results.