Crowd Engineering - Approach for Smart and Agile Product Development in Networks

Product life cycles are getting shorter. Companies are working to shorten development of new products and ramp-up of production. Based on increased customization, the production volume is reduced, too. In view of the magic triangle of production optimization, companies are forced to reduce (1) costs and (2) time while ensuring consistent (3) quality. The introduction of Crowd Engineering can support companies in their task of improving their product development approaches. By integrating professionals as well as nonprofessionals in the product development processes, well-designed products with reduced utilization of human resources are possible. The current research shows major requirements and challenges, which need to be addressed: Whom does the crowd to be addressed consist of? How can development tasks be outsourced to the crowd and how can the results be reintegrated into internal processes of the company? Which areas can be co-worked by the crowd? Companies must identify their core issues in engineering in order to manage efforts sensibly. With the definition of tasks for the community, it is required to identify appropriate interfaces to provide space for open innovation through the crowd. The tasks should focus on areas without relevance for competition, thus avoiding making intellectual property rights publicly available. In this paper, the current research on distributed development processes and crowds shall be presented. Application formats enabling Crowd Engineering and arising challenges are presented. Additionally, the motivation of companies is discussed.