Product Development vs. Production Development

The lifecycle of a product and the lifecycle of the respective production equipment intersect in the production phase of the product, which at the same time represents the use phase of the production equipment. Product development and production development however follow more or less independent pathways, making use of different terminology, methods and tools. Problems tend to occur especially on issues requiring deeper domain-spanning integration. This leads to the questions, if and how both process streams could or should be interlinked any deeper or mutually adapted any further, and if an integrated methodology would be reachable and desirable. The presented research work proposes answers to these questions based on a comparison of both domains’ processes, methods and tool/IT perspectives.