Characteristics affecting management of design information in the production system design process

Although it has been argued that the design of production systems is crucial, there is a general lack of empirical studies analysing and identifying resources and capabilities required for an efficient production system design process. One of these resources is the critical role attributed to design information and one such capability is how the design information is managed. To address this research gap, this paper reports the results from two in-depth case studies in the automotive industry focusing on the management of design information in the production system design process. Our results show that design information management needs to be understood as a multidimensional concept having three dimensions: acquiring, sharing and using design information. By focusing on the three dimensions, six characteristics affecting the management of design information when designing the production system are identified. The characteristics are information type, source of information, communication medium, formalisation, information quality and pragmatic information.