Distribution, both geographical and due to outsourcing, plays a major role as a strategic consideration and instrument to advance product quality, to reduce development time, and even to save costs. That applies in particular for the automotive industry, where a large number of participants, divisions, and suppliers have to work together, developing a highly complex and sophisticated product which is characterized by an immense market pressure. However a lot of problems are associated with distribution such as increased development complexity, additional expenditure for coordination and communication, and problems due to different educational and cultural backgrounds. To support related management activities, e. g. planning, organizing, and decision making, a tool set will be introduced in the following. It consists of a tool monitoring the project status, a protocol system, and an information platform and may help to plan and realize distributed development processes more efficiently and flexible. By providing transparency of processes finally redundancy and double work shall be avoided, synchronization improved as well as best possible requirements fulfilment and product quality reached.     «

Distribution, both geographical and due to outsourcing, plays a major role as a strategic consideration and instrument to advance product quality, to reduce development time, and even to save costs. That applies in particular for the automotive industry, where a large number of participants, divisions, and suppliers have to work together, developing a highly complex and sophisticated product which is characterized by an immense market pressure. However a lot of problems are associated with distr...     »