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This paper discusses Information Driven Collaborative Engineering (IDCE) as an enabler of Functional Product Innovation (FPI). It discusses challenges that arise in functional product development and how distributed collaborative work will be affected. Finally the paper proposes bringing the domains of Distributed Collaborative Engineering (DCE) and Knowledge Enabled Engineering (KEE) together to form IDCE, in order to meet these challenges.

Today’s collaboration tools can support formal meetings to a certain extent, though there is still an immense potential for improvement when it comes to designing virtual and physical places where global design teams can collaborate in more ‘natural’ ways than existing distributed environments allow. One challenge for global product development is to support true collaboration within global design teams, where diversity and competences of the whole team can be utilized and where team members can think together rather then merely exchange information, opinions and divide work. This paper summarizes the results of several case studies and development projects performed within the Polhem Laboratory over the last four years and proposes challenges for future research. From our findings some of the most important challenges are how to support users with communication tools for more natural formal and informal communication (i.e. as a co-located team communicates), while automatically storing information and context from the distributed meetings.

Industrial product development focused companies, such as car manufacturers, have traditionally developed and sold hardware products. In professional business-to-business relations, the integration of hardware and software with services has been identified as a shift in focus in the seller-buyer relationship from hardware development to function development and the way a sustainable economic performance could be achieved. Therefore, the common perception today of where the product is mainly hardware only, needs to be expanded to include a definition where it does not even have to have any hardware at all. Expanding the product definition therefore places additional demands on the design and development of hardware, software and services that may all be part of the functional product. Further, this article discusses how customer requirements need to be handled when developing a total offer in the form of a functional product. Finally, the traits needed in the engineer who is to develop it while being part of amulti-cultural team are discussed, possibly a geographically distributed team.

In this article, an activity-based modeling and simulation approach to functional product development (FPD) is suggested as part of a simulation-driven CWE approach to meet the new demands that are placed on tools and methods used in industrial product development due to companies' transformation from hardware providers to function providers. The rationale for a simulation approach is discussed as well as the usefulness when applied on a process of work. An iterative data gathering and analysis process based on interviews and field notes is presented challenges for distributed working environment practices posed by the introduction of functional product development have been identified. They include four different and interrelated issues pertaining to approach, methods and tools, tolerances for errors and the ability to distribute new tools with extensive demands on usability and interoperability

The research concerns identification of parameters important for the studied organisation's success in service concept design and delivery. Knowledge was gathered through interviews and participation in daily industrial work activities. The gathered knowledge was used for developing a MATLAB-based simulation model, of which the purpose is to improve the studied company's ability to develop hardware-based services at an early concept stage, and to simulate, beforehand, the predicted performance of a given service scenario. This approach minimises the cost of each concept and allows simulation of several different concepts before the actual work is done.

This paper discusses creation of a support tool (SIMULINK model) for collaborative work process modelling and optimisation based on Simulation Driven Design (SDD). The purpose is to improve the studied company's ability to develop hardware-based services in an early concept stage, and to predict performance of a given service scenario before development. The approach is useful as a decision-support tool in evaluating and prioritising business offers and activities in the business offer process. The modelling and simulation approach minimises the cost of each concept and allows simulation of a number of different concepts before the actual work is carried out