Understanding The Collaborative Engineering Design Process In A Global Environment: Observations of Japanese and American Approaches

In an increasingly competitive and global environment, it is not uncommon for corporations to pursue joint partnerships, and strategic alliances in order to rapidly introduce products and services into the marketplace. These partnerships can and do occur between corporations that are located in countries with significant cultural and societal differences. Inherent in these partnerships is the continuing need to design and develop products and processes for rapid introduction into the marketplace. Concurrent engineering and collaborative engineering are approaches that have proven effective for bringing high quality products into the marketplace very quickly. Because the concurrent engineering process relies extensively on communications and various interactions among diverse team members, understanding how cultural and societal differences impact this process may prove critical to its successful implementation where strategic alliances or partnerships are concerned. What happens when team members are not culturally and socially identical? What are the potential barriers to successful use of concurrent engineering in this scenario? We will seek to identify some of those barriers in this paper. This discussion is based in part on case study research conducted in Japan and the United States specifically for packaging design. Background material on concurrent engineering and packaging/packaging systems is also provided.