Analysis of information flows at interfaces between strategic product planning, product development and production planning to support process management - A literature based approach

Innovation processes of technical products underlie dynamic company internal and external influencing factors, which require a high degree of flexibility. Part of this flexibility is an adaptive behavior towards technical changes, in general within development as well as within production. These cycles of adaptations and changes necessitate an active coordination of information flows between the relevant domains. Accordingly, information about changes, e.g. the reasons as well as the consequences of changes, is transmitted at various interfaces within the innovation process. This provides the basis for deciding about the implementation of changes and adaptations across the different domains. Research has addressed the support of information exchange within innovation processes and specifically between the domains of product development and production. Nonetheless, the dynamics of internal and external influencing factors as well as of the related information exchange are not reflected comprehensively in approaches to support information exchange between these domains. Therefore, this paper addresses shortcomings of existing approaches regarding dynamics of information exchange through a literature based elaboration of interfaces and information flows between strategic product planning, product development and production planning. In this context, the production planning is represented by manufacturing technology, production resource and production structure planning. Accordingly, this paper aims at supporting sound decision making on the implementation of cyclic changes and adaptations in development and production by providing a classification of communication interfaces and information flows across domains.