Analysing collaboration in order to propose a framework for supporting management of co-design network
Résumé
In a worldwide context of new products and/or services development, networks of actors are activated during the first phases of co-design projects both from an informal and management view. We study the different aspects of co-design and informal networks, and then we introduce an approach for analysing the actors' network structuring. We apply it through a worldwide company producing energy. This industrial case explores the structuring then the management of actors' networks involved in a process of constructing a technical and financial proposal to potential customers. Dimensions such as project organisational structure, concurrent engineering techniques, groupware-like and knowledge-based systems support are analysed. Our aim is to develop a global framework for supporting management of co-design networks integrating these dimensions. A system divided into two main components is proposed: the first one to characterize networks and to model these networks, by integrating the mechanisms of quantification and qualification, and indicators. The second relates to the exploitation. The objective is twofold: first allowing an actor to manage its own list of external or internal collaborators with criteria of characterization; and second allowing a project manager to define a series of target indicators in order to select actors to imply into a new project.