Introduction of a maturity model for the assessment of the integration of the GPS system in companies

For more than 25 years, the aim of the Geometrical Product Specification (GPS) system has been to establish a consistent framework for specification and verification of geometrical properties ensuring the functional requirements placed on a product – unambiguously, completely and non-verbally. In order to get to know the system or to learn how to use it, it is common for selected employees, mostly designers or developers, to receive training courses lasting several days. The majority of the currently 150 existing individual standards are presented in an overview while the extensive symbol language is explained and applied to fictitious examples. Though, because of a lack of efficient teaching courses, it is almost impossible for the technical experts to use the GPS system in practice in its entirety. Furthermore, all far-reaching cuts in all product development processes, including the interfaces considering the internal and external customer supplier relationships, are still not understood sufficiently. There is no user-friendly procedure for integrating the GPS system into companies and assessing the progress of application, up to now. This paper describes the approach of a GPS integration based on a maturity model. The aim is to enable companies to integrate the GPS system into the entire product development process using agile methods and to develop themselves into learning organizations.