STUDY OF THE EFFICIENCY OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TEAMS THROUGH COMBINED VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE, PLM AND SOCIAL MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

With globalization and increasing product complexity, manufacturing industries are experiencing increased user demands to incorporate informal exchange mechanisms especially when it coMES to international groups and multifunctional products where collaboration is much more difficult. The article looks at industrial case studies within a global manufacturing company involving established communities of practices and Enterprise Social Media (ESM) technologies to see how these could possibly be combined eventually with PLM tools to improve the productivity of large product development teams. The results of surveys based on geodistant product development teams are presented. Then, a Social Network Analysis (SNA) tool is evaluated to represent the product development team dynamics and a brief overview of Social PLM functionalities is presented. The study indicates that the role of communities of practice and their moderators supported by ESM technologies can effectively complement the formal product development process commonly supported by PLM systems based on 3D mock-ups and other Data Management Systems.