A Concept for Knowledge Transfer between New Product Projects in the Automotive Industry

Global mergers and acquisitions in the automotive industry have left only a few companies offering a variety of brands. Shorter product life cycles have increased the number of product launches for each brand, raising the number of new product projects for companies in the automotive sector. In a new vehicle project, covering all product creation stages, the knowledge about product and production process gained by vehicle and production tests increases as the new product project approaches the start of production. The approach in this paper focuses on potential changes to product and production process that do not go through the change management process. These potential changes can be exploited in current or subsequent projects.