The static relationship between business development and engineering design hinders the pace of innovation. While managers often evaluate innovations in terms of the financial value generated on a variety of scenarios, design teams base
their activities on improving product functionality and meeting technical requirements. This results in a difficulty in communicating and evaluating, during product development meetings, the real impact on the business of different engineering alternatives. This difficulty hinders the company's ability to innovate. This presentation highlights, through real-life examples from product development projects, the difficulties of communicating between business development teams and engineering design teams. Furthermore, this presentation describes how these difficulties can be supported through the application of value-driven design techniques by both business development teams and engineering teams. The introduction of these techniques was evaluated through interviews, workshops and observations with industrial partners in the space, aeronautics and automotive sectors in different countries. The results indicate a bi-directional interest in these methods, both from business members and from design team members. The reported advantages are both quantitative in nature (as the interactions and iterations between engineering and business are increased) as well as qualitative, highlighting the participants’ perceived advantages of these techniques to become more efficient and competitive.
Massimo Panarotto is Associate Professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden since 2021. His research is focused on developing value-driven models and methods to support the early stages of product development. The research is conducted in collaboration with companies in the space, aeronautics and automotive sectors. He earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden) in 2015, and a Master degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Padua in 2011. He is a member of the Design Society and author of over 40 publications in the fields of systems engineering and engineering design. He has also taught in more than 10 courses in mechanical and management engineering degree programs.