Robert BraunF&E-Effizienz in Kooperationen der Automobilindustrie

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Automotive industry is characterized by innovation speed and cost pressure. To encounter these challenges, companies integrate partners into R&D. As consequence, R&D processes have to be managed across company’s borders. Here, efficiency is an important goal.

Concurrent engineering methods are used to increase R&D efficiency. If these methods should be employed in co-operations, the task environment of the companies has to be taken into account since it may influence the methods.

As a contribution to innovation research, this work shows the influence of environmental parameters on concurrent engineering methods. Because task environment can be characterized by environmental parameters in early stages of co-operations, pre-conditions for efficient R&D processes can be set in place by applying the relationships found in this investigation.

Empirical data were gathered in the German automotive industry. The analysis shows that inter-organizational trust is the only environmental parameter correlating with concurrent engineering methods in a relevant way. Therefore it is assumed that inter-organizational trust reduces project duration and thus increases R&D efficiency.

Surprisingly, correlations with concurrent engineering were not found for co-operations founded to integrate specialized partner knowledge. This may lead to reduced R&D efficiency contrasting the motivation of these co-operations.

Managerial implication is to prioritize a process to build and maintain inter-organizational trust from the beginning of a R&D co-operation on.