Evolving Product Information in Aligning Product Development Decisions across Disciplines

Today's product development is fragmented across various disciplines all with their own fields of expertise. Maintaining overview in consequences and implications of decisions is difficult, since many stakeholders are involved. To optimise the product development, many methods are developed based on optimising the process of information exchange, which is required in analysing consequences and implications of potential decisions. This information exchange is often by means of communication between stakeholders. This paper describes an approach that is not based on the process, but on the product information itself, since the final product system is key in product development. The suitability of employing the Actor-Artefact network in aligning decisions across different disciplines by focusing on the evolving product information is investigated.