Erfarenheter från Olika Produktutvecklingsprocesser vid Utvecklingen av en Atmosfärisk Vattengenerator
This Master of Science thesis was completed at the Department of Machine Design at the Royal Instituteof Technology in Stockholm in collaboration with Lund Faculty of Engineering, Luleå University ofTechnology and Stanford University. At Stanford University a global product development project wasrealized as part of the course ME310. The project was initiated by the American company ImmerseGlobal whose vision was to develop a new type of Atmospheric Water Generators, a machine that absorbsthe moisture in the air and via a water system transforms it to pure drinking water. The project was partlyfinanced by the Product Innovation Engineering program, a Swedish research and development programfor increased innovation capability in organizations.In parallel with the global project in the ME310 course the product development process was studied inorder to compare it with a product development course at the Royal Institute of Technology, IPU. Thetwo courses are similar to each other in several aspects. The purpose was to identify the differences thatexist in the two procedures, the circumstances and how this will affect the final result. Observations weremade over the two courses as a member of the Immerse Water project (07/08) in ME310 and as a memberof project Excludo (05/06) in IPU. To verify the observations made over the two projects a questionnairewas made and answered by students in each course, projects from previous years were also studied.The results of the two product development processes also depend a lot on the surrounding and itscircumstances, which will come to be reflected in the final result, the atmosphere in USA and especiallyin Silicon Valley versus the atmosphere in Scandinavia and Sweden. The projects in ME310 contain ahigher risk and are less controlled by the companies as a consequence of an open assignment, resources inappearance of money and a team with competent students complementing each other with differentbackgrounds. This resulted in many cases in a product new to the market. The projects in IPU came toreflect the more cautious way of working and with a more strict assignment. With less freedom and amore structured cross-functional way of working, it resulted in a product that can be seen as amodification of an already existing product with high quality and close to perfection.The differences that were identified in the two courses were much about how, when and what kind ofmethods in the product development process that were prioritized. In ME310 a lot of effort was given tostay creative in order to enhance the level of innovation of the final product. In IPU the focus was moreon structure and control in order to deliver an end product of high quality and functionality. The twoproduct development processes are known to work and have advantages and disadvantages over eachother. It is more a question of what you want to achieve with limited resources. It would probably haveworked to combine the two different processes to achieve an innovative and well-developed product.