Time to Market—Enabling the Specific Efficiency and Cooperation in Product Development by the Institutional Role Model

Abstract

This paper discusses major and effective aspects that in future will be important for R&D management in the automotive industry and that will have an enormous impact on the entire value creation chain. Firstly, there are efficiency potentials for reducing development time in design and management of the entire product development process (for example, implementation of an IT system with real-time information, predictive analytics and total networking of all value creation partners). Secondly, the complexity involved in the new technologies and the associated networking being set up between business environment and automotive industry. For example car-to-customer, car-to-car or cooperative intelligent transport systems increasingly demand horizontal and agile cooperation among various industry branches (for example, car industry, telecommunications industry, over-the-top players) and the legislatures of the different markets. Moreover, it becomes clear that the particular public or private highway operators either support or hinder the market success of the new car technologies. Here, the urgent need for close cooperation has been recognized and already exists. However, the process with its milestones is still in a very early phase of product development. Nevertheless, the companies leading the market and the government agencies will cooperate intensely in future and thus also make application of the new technologies possible. For this reason, a form of business architecture was chosen that permits competitively neutral and non-discriminating cooperation with the stakeholders. The theory of the Institutional Role Model (IRM) created a multifunctional approach that permits a holistic type of cooperation and creates very good prerequisites for improving efficiency. The concept of the Institutional Role Model was used successfully for three national research projects (e.g. CONVERGE; Market Design for C-ITS). Within these projects the IRM was used for market phase introduction and penetration. This paper integrates the IRM early into the agile digital product development process. This process redesign will enable managers in the automotive industry to generate unique optimization opportunities in future.