Technical Communication in Complex Product-Development Activities: Towards A Sustainable Competitive Advantage Perspective

For decades now, industrial manufacturers' complex product-development activities have seen various improvement approaches as well as product-development support processes all in the quest to achieve shorter product development lead-times and higher return on investments (ROIs). However, with all the industrial manufacturing complex product-development process improvements, in terms of complex engineering design and delivery, there is still a lot more variance to be addressed on the 'better, faster and cheaper' paradigm. Furthermore, attention is needed on efficient information exchange systems as well as effective operational communication in their complex product-development processes for a sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore, this paper presents a proposed optimum conceptual information technology systems' architecture towards enhancing an industrial sustainable competitive advantage: By employing social network theory (SNT) analysis to advise on a strategic and effective communication network for industrial supply-chain (SC) sustainable competitive advantage.