| Collaborative product development (CPD) is the application of external and cross-functional team-collaboration practices to an organization's product development efforts within the systems life cycle engineering model. Most studies on the application of collaborative product development have been performed in high-production and/or manufacturing environments. Research into the applicability and benefits of CPD into a low/no production, service, research and development, and/or government environment is limited. Most experts agree that aspects of CPD should be applicable to any kind of R&D setting; however there is limited research on the subject, as it applies to a government R&D environment.; Exploratory research on the implementation of CPD in an R&D environment was carried out at the NASA Glenn Research Center. Constructs were developed based on a review of the literature, leading to a two-phase research consisting of semi-structured interviews of managers and a targeted mail questionnaire. The constructs included elements of Supply Chain Management since this emerging research area is critical to CPD. The results were analyzed using content analysis, factor analysis, ANOVA, and analysis of descriptive statistics.; With the results, a framework for the implementation of CPD in and R&D environment was developed, as well as suggestions for further research. |
