SFB 768 - C1

The realization and use of the individual components of complex market offerings, which today usually comprise combinations of product and service elements in service bundles, are subject to different development and production times. A wide variety of life cycles for the individual components, which are provided by different functional areas, as well as cyclical market, competitive and social developments and trends, present companies with major challenges. The cyclical interactions exacerbate the high pressure on results and deadlines when innovating technical products and the services increasingly linked to them, which is reflected in shortened testing phases, frequent model changes and therefore risks that are difficult to calculate.

When developing complex solutions, the ability to adequately integrate customers into the innovation and solution development process is a decisive factor for differentiation from the competition and overall economic success. However, manufacturers often fail to take sufficient account of their customers' requirements, needs or ideas for further development. The supposed "solution" often only addresses the customer's problem inadequately or temporarily, as the various service bundles for solving the problem are usually offered individually and are each subject to their own innovation cycles or are strongly influenced by external (e.g. technology, market, fashion) cycles.

The long-term goal of this project is to develop a cross-cycle methodology for integrating customers into solution development across the entire innovation process.

First, methods and routines already used in science and practice for active customer integration, in particular with regard to their suitability for dealing with cycles in innovation processes, are collected and analyzed. Based on this, a model for active, cross-cycle customer integration is developed, which is then expanded and prototypically evaluated by an IT-supported method apparatus for active, cross-cycle customer integration in solution development.

• Detailed and comprehensive understanding of innovation processes from a cycle perspective
• Possibilities for modeling and designing cyclical interactions in the innovation process
• Provision of a basis for making solution development more needs-oriented, faster and better through cross-cycle customer integration

• BSH Bosch and Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH
• Chair of Information Technology in Mechanical Engineering: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Bender
• Chair of Product Development: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Udo Lindemann, Dr.-Ing. Markus Mörtl
• Chair of Control Engineering: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Boris Lohmann
• Chair of Industrial Engineering and Assembly Technology: Prof. Dr.-Ing.
• Chair of Information Technology in Mechanical Engineering; Department of Automation Technology: Prof. Dr.-Ing.
• Chair of Product Development; Department of Applications of Virtual Product Development: Prof. Dr. Kristina Shea
• Chair of Sociology: Prof. Dr. Rainer Trinczek
• Chair of Service and Technology Marketing: Prof. Dr. Florian von Wangenheim
• Chair of Machine Tools and Production Engineering: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Zäh

German Research Foundation

• DIN (ed.) (2009): Hybride Wertschöpfung - Integration von Sach- und Dienstleistung, PAS 1094, Berlin 2009, Beuth.
• Hoffmann, H.; Fähling, J.; Leimeister, J.M.; Krcmar, H. (2009): Customer integration in the innovation processes of hybrid products - an inventory. In: Proceedings of Informatik 2009 - Im Focus das Leben, ed.: GI - Gesellschaft für Informatik, GI Lecture Notes in Informatics, Lübeck.
• Köbler, F., Fähling, J., Vattai, A., Leimeister, J. M., Krcmar, H. (2009): Analysis of value creation by product-service-systems in the German medical engineering industry, International Symposium on Services Science 2009, Leipzig, 2009.

• Project description TUM - Technical University of Munich

• Prof. Dr. Jan Marco Leimeister