Enhancing Knowledge sharing in “Fuzzy Front End” of NPD: An Aerospace Case Study

This paper describes the actions undertaken by an aerospace company in order to improve the knowledge transfer during the Fuzzy Front End (FFE) phase of the New Product Development Process (NPD). In this phase the organization formulates a product’s concept and decides whether or not to invest resources in the further development. In the FFE, the impact of each decision is very high. The FFE phase is characterized by a large amount of information and knowledge coming from internal and external actors. The result of these chaotic, unpredictable, and unstructured activities is the conceptualization of a new product, a prerequisite for a program. The internal organizational knowledge is very important since core competences and competitive advantage of a company need to be considered in order to realize a product that best fit the organizational abilities. The case study presented in this paper describes the Knowledge management strategy and system introduced to support the internal knowledge transfer in FFE phase of an aerospace company. The findings show that in addition to traditional codified knowledge sources, it is essential that knowledge from multiple sources is effectively integrated using technological and not-technological initiatives. The case study experiences suggest lessons for other firms attempting to manage knowledge assets in FFE.