A Simulation Study of Project Management and Collaborative Information Technologies

Communication plans are intrinsic to project management. However, the time and cost effects of communication plan choices have largely been overlooked. Herein, we study the impact of three types of communications plans that implement collaborative information technologies (CITs) (i.e., asynchronous, synchronous and both) on the key project metrics of communication cost and project schedule performance across projects of different complexity. We use simulation and virtual experiments to gather data for a two-way ANOVA analysis. Our results indicate that the communication cost and schedule performance significantly differ based on the communication plan choice of CITs and complexity. Also, some communication plans carry more cost or schedule risk (i.e., variation) across project complexity than others. As such, project managers should strategically consider the nature of the project and the choice of CITs as important inputs when generating a communication plan

Antecedents and Consequences of New Product Development Practices and Software Tools: An Exploratory Study

Many development practices and software tools enable new product development (NPD), yet few empirical studies shed light on the project characteristics and project contexts driving their use. Using a cross-sectional sample of NPD projects, this study examines how project characteristics and availability of information technology (IT) infrastructure relate to the use of NPD practices and software tools. We also examine how the extent of their use is associated with NPD project performance. The results indicate that different project characteristics influence the use of NPD practices and software tools, with project complexity associated with software tool use, but project uncertainty associated with NPD practice use. Also, customer facing IT infrastructure is associated with the use of NPD practices, while manufacturing plant IT infrastructure is associated with the use of design/validation software tools. Moreover, use of NPD practices has a positive association with all project-level performance metrics examined in this study, and as a result, a greater impact on overall market success. In comparison, the performance impacts of software tools appear relatively limited, with only design/validation software tools exhibiting a strong positive association with product performance quality and a weak positive association with time-to-market and responsiveness. Communication/teamwork software tools exhibit no such impact

Un modèle de planification tactique avec chevauchement

RÉSUMÉ : La gestion de projets est une discipline complexe, qui requiert des outils efficaces pour aider les gestionnaires dans la prise de décision. En construction, cette discipline emploie des techniques de fast tracking, similaires à celles de l’ingénierie simultanée, afin de réaliser les projets en régime accéléré. Une des techniques couramment employées est le chevauchement des lots de travaux, consistant à exécuter en parallèle deux lots normalement séquentiels, en commençant le lot aval tout en se basant sur des informations préliminaires du lot amont. Des outils de planification de projet avec chevauchement existent mais concernent uniquement le niveau opérationnel. À notre connaissance, les praticiens ne disposent pas d’outils les aidant dans leur choix de chevauchement lors de la planification tactique. Compte tenu de l’importance de ces pratiques dans le milieu industriel d’aujourd’hui, ce mémoire traite de la planification tactique de projet avec des possibilités de chevauchement entre les lots de travaux. Un modèle de planification agrégée, connue aussi sous le nom de Rough-Cut Capacity Planning, avec chevauchement est proposé sous forme de programme linéaire en nombres entiers. Ce modèle combine des représentations discrète et continue du temps et considère plusieurs modes de chevauchement possibles pour les lots. Le modèle a été testé sur 5 séries de 450 instances chacune et permet de résoudre plus de la moitié en moins de 500 secondes. Moins que le tiers de ces instances n’a pas été résolu à l’optimum dans un délai inférieur à 10000 secondes. Les résultats montrent que le chevauchement, initialement une technique d’accélération de projet, permet également la réduction des coûts en autorisant une meilleure distribution des charges. Cependant, certaines limitations ont été soulevées à notre modèle, concernant surtout son applicabilité à la pratique. En particulier, le modèle requiert des entrées qui peuvent être difficilement accessibles pour un projet réel et la résolution exacte nécessite de long temps de calcul pour des projets de grande ampleur. Afin de contourner la deuxième limite, une alternative a été envisagée en construisant une heuristique basée sur le modèle exact. Cette heuristique semble donner des résultats encourageants. D’autres limitations ont également été soulignées concernant le caractère aléatoire des données, le type des liens d’antériorité et les fonctions objectifs considérées. Ces limitations, ainsi que les résultats prometteurs obtenus par la solution alternative, ouvrent plusieurs voies de recherche pertinentes. Les principales avenues sont le développement d’une heuristique basée sur le modèle exact, la prise en compte de l’incertitude et la généralisation des liens d’antériorité.----------ABSTRACT : Project management is a complex discipline that requires strong tools in order to help the managers make the best decisions. In construction, fast tracking techniques, similar to Concurrent Engineering techniques, are commonly employed in order to accelerate project execution. One of these techniques is the overlapping of work packages, consisting in executing in parallel two normally sequential work packages, by starting the successor before the end of the predecessor based on preliminary information. While some planning tools with overlapping exist for the operational level, to our knowledge, no such tools are dedicated for the tactical level. Thus, practitioners do not have a tool that helps them make overlapping decisions at a tactical planning. Motivated by a true need, this study focuses on tactical project planning with the possibility of overlapping for work packages. A mixed integer linear programming model for the Rough-Cut Capacity Planning problem with overlapping is proposed. The model combines continuous and discrete representations of time, and considers several possible overlapping modes for work packages. The model was tested on 5 sets of 450 instances each, and manages to solve more than half of instances within 500 seconds, while less than one third of the instances were not solved to optimality when reaching the time limit of 10000 seconds. Results show that overlapping can reduce project cost by allowing a better distribution of workload, even though it is primarily a technique for accelerating projects. The model has several limitations mostly concerning its fitness to real projects applications. In fact, the model requires inputs that can be challenging to obtain in real projects, and it requires long solving times for big projects. In order to address that second limitation, a heuristic based on the exact model was proposed as an alternative solution, and gives very encouraging preliminary results. Other limitations were also raised concerning the stochastic nature of the problem, the type of precedence relations, and the considered objectives. These limitations, as well as the promising results of the alternative solution, offer interesting prospects for the future. Possible research avenues include development of heuristics based on the exact model, consideration of uncertainty, and generalization of precedence relations

Proposta de modelo de referência para o processo de desenvolvimento de produto para a indústria de móveis

Brazilian industry of furniture has faced a decrease of competitiveness in the export market in recent years. It can be noticed by the decrease in exports of furniture while total Brazilian exports increased. However, this sector has potential to expand their sales by taking advantage of the expansion of foreign markets, considering that most of the countries of the European market are deficient in the production of furniture. The main alternatives to strengthen the furniture sector are focused on the improvement of the production process and the product development process (PDP). The improvement of PDP is one of the main keys to increase the competitiveness of companies. PDP has increasingly been considered as a decisive process in companies’ strategies. One of the ways to improve the PDP is through the use of reference models that meet the needs and particularities of the company. However, specific reference models available in the literature are exceeded or far off and because of this they meet only very specific demands and are focuses to small and medium size industries. Thus, the present study aimed to propose a specific reference model to the furniture industry with the intent of providing greater chances of developing successful products. The elaboration of the proposal was made in three steps. In the first step it was conducted a collection in literature of PDP models generic and specific to the furniture sector in the available literature. In the second step it was performed an analysis of the structure of the PDP in sector through a questionnaire and on-site observation. Finally, in the third step was the preparation of the proposed model. The proposed model is divided into three major phases which are divided into 7 stages. This model is still made up by 11 decision activities, gates and intermediate gates. This proposed model for the PDP in the furniture industry, besides presenting an overview of the process, even offers a systematization of activities that occur in each phase. It is a more embracing model, directed to the industries in the furniture industry as a whole, not being directed to a characteristic region or for a peculiarity of the sector such as the other models found in the literature. This model can be used as a reference for the academic and business fields due to the level of detail of the process. It comes to contribute to the improvement of the PDP in the furniture industry and the lack of research in this area and can be used as a starting point for the organization of the process in companies.CAPES; CNPqA indústria brasileira de móveis tem sofrido uma perda de competitividade no mercado externo nos últimos anos. Isso pode ser visto pelo decréscimo nas exportações de móveis que tem ocorrido ao passo que as exportações totais brasileiras têm aumentado. Contudo, o setor tem potencial para ampliar suas vendas, principalmente aproveitando a expansão do mercado externo, considerando que a maioria dos países do mercado europeu é deficitária na produção de móveis. As principais alternativas para o fortalecimento do setor moveleiro centram-se no aprimoramento do processo produtivo e do processo de desenvolvimento de produto (PDP). A melhoria do PDP é um dos fatores considerados fundamentais para aumentar a capacidade competitiva das empresas. O PDP tem sido considerado cada vez mais um processo decisivo na estratégia das empresas. Uma das maneiras para melhorar o PDP é por meio da utilização de modelos de referência adequados às necessidades e particularidades da empresa. Entretanto, os modelos de referência específicos disponíveis na literatura são ultrapassados ou muito pontuais, atendendo a uma demanda muito específica e ainda voltada às indústrias de pequeno e médio porte. Assim, o presente estudo teve por objetivo propor um modelo de referência específico para a indústria de móveis com intuito de proporcionar maiores chances de desenvolver um produto de sucesso. A elaboração da proposta foi realizada por meio de três etapas. Na primeira etapa foi realizado um levantamento dos modelos de PDP genéricos e específicos para o setor moveleiro disponíveis na literatura. Na segunda etapa, realizou-se um diagnóstico da estrutura do PDP no referido setor por meio de um questionário e observação in loco. E a terceira etapa foi a elaboração do modelo proposto. O modelo proposto é dividido em três macrofases subdivididas em 7 fases. Esse modelo ainda apresentou ainda 11 atividades de decisão, gates e gates intermediários. Essa proposta de modelo para o PDP na indústria de móveis além de apresentar uma visão ampla do processo, ainda oferece a sistematização das atividades que ocorrem em cada fase. É um modelo mais abrangente, direcionado as indústrias do setor moveleiro como um todo, não sendo direcionado para uma região característica ou para uma particularidade do setor como é o caso dos demais modelos encontrados na literatura. Esse pode ser utilizado como referência para o meio acadêmico e empresarial devido ao nível de detalhamento do processo. Vem a contribuir para melhoria do processo de PDP na indústria de móveis e a carência de pesquisas na área e pode ser utilizado como um ponto de partida para a organização do processo nas empresas

Structuring NPD processes: advancements in test scheduling and activity sequencing

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Étude de l’impact du chevauchement sur les performances de projets complexes d’ingénierie

RÉSUMÉ : Le chevauchement d’activités au sein d’un projet est une des techniques les plus répandues pour accélérer l’exécution d’un projet. Le chevauchement d’activités consiste à autoriser des activités qui traditionnellement s’exécutent de façon séquentielle à se chevaucher de sorte que les activités en aval débutent avant la fin des activités en amont en se basant sur des informations partielles. Plusieurs stratégies d’exécution de projets appliquées dans la pratique, telles que l’ingénierie simultanée dans les projets de développement de produits et la construction en « fast-tracking », reposent sur ce principe. Cette technique a montré ses preuves dans sa capacité à réduire la durée de projets, avec cependant plusieurs inconvénients. Le chevauchement peut causer des retouches du travail exécuté à partir d’information préliminaire et mener à des itérations. Ces retouches sont difficilement quantifiables et représentent une charge de travail et des coûts supplémentaires qui peuvent réduire ou annuler les bénéfices du chevauchement. Cela soulève la question de quand et de combien les activités devraient être chevauchées dans les projets industriels. Dans la pratique, les gestionnaires de projets ne possèdent pas d’outils d’aide à la décision pour répondre à cette question. Cette thèse s’intéresse ainsi au problème d’ordonnancement de projet avec chevauchement d’activités dans un contexte déterministe. Ce problème cherche à déterminer conjointement le meilleur calendrier en termes de coût ou de durée de projet et les décisions de chevauchement, c’est-à-dire quelles activités chevaucher et dans quelle mesure. Nous nous intéressons aux projets complexes caractérisés par des contraintes de disponibilité de ressources, des réseaux complexes d’activités, un nombre important d’activités et de couples d’activités qui peuvent se chevaucher. Les objectifs de cette thèse sont de modéliser, quantifier et analyser, dans le cas de projets complexes d’ingénierie, l’impact des décisions de chevauchement activités sur les performances de projet (durée et coût), en considérant un modèle réaliste de chevauchement. Cette thèse vise aussi à apporter une meilleure compréhension de ces choix dans les projets complexes et proposer des stratégies générales applicables en pratique. Les travaux réalisés dans le cadre de cette thèse sont articulés autour de trois articles publiés ou soumis à des revues scientifiques. Le premier article intitulé « Time-cost trade-offs in resource-constrained project scheduling problems with overlapping modes » (publié en 2014 dans International Journal of Project Organisation and Management) introduit un modèle de chevauchement d’activités basé sur des modes de chevauchement reliés aux jalons internes des activités et permet de modéliser de façon réaliste et flexible la relation entre durée de chevauchement et durée de retouche. Ce modèle est inséré dans une modélisation du problème de compromis durée-coût de l’ordonnancement de projets complexes avec contraintes de ressource et chevauchement d’activités sous la forme d’un programme linéaire en nombres entiers. Les durées de communication/coordination et de retouches sont considérées. Le problème est résolu avec une méthode exacte pour un exemple virtuel de projet. Les résultats illustrent les interactions entre le coût de projet, la durée du projet et les contraintes de ressource ainsi que leur influence sur le temps de résolution. Le second article intitulé « A Path Relinking-based Scatter Search for the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem » (soumis dans European Journal of Operational Research) introduit une métaheuristique dans la famille des recherches dispersées (« scatter search ») pour résoudre le problème standard RCPSP (« Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem ») sans chevauchement. Cet algorithme utilise la méthode FBI (« Forward-Backward Improvement »), inverse la direction d’ordonnancement à chaque itération et est basé sur deux mécanismes novateurs. Premièrement, un PR (« Path Relinking ») bidirectionnel avec un nouveau mouvement opérant sur les distances entre activités est utilisé comme méthode de combinaison des solutions. Deuxièmement, une méthode d’amélioration est utilisée pour améliorer la qualité et la diversité des solutions de l’ensemble de référence. Une méthode avancée de paramétrage de l’algorithme utilisant une méthode de recherche locale a été développée pour déterminer les meilleures valeurs de ses paramètres. L’article montre que cette métaheuristique est capable de fournir des solutions de grande qualité avec des temps de calcul acceptables et appartient aux meilleures méthodes approchées existantes dans la littérature pour la résolution des instances virtuelles de projet de PSPLIB. Enfin, le troisième article intitulé « Influence of the project characteristics on the efficiency of activity overlapping » (soumis dans Computers & Operations Research) a pour principales contributions de quantifier et d’analyser l’influence de huit caractéristiques de projets sur l’efficacité du chevauchement pour diminuer la durée de projet. La réduction de la durée de projet est obtenue en résolvant le problème RCPSP avec et sans chevauchement. Deux méthodes de résolution sont développées pour résoudre le problème avec chevauchement. Une nouvelle méthode exacte basée sur un programme linéaire en nombres entiers avec modes de chevauchement et des techniques de propagation de contraintes est développée. La seconde méthode est une métaheuristique dérivée de la métaheuristique proposée dans le second article. Ces méthodes sont appliquées à un bassin de 3888 instances virtuelles de projets de 30 à 120 activités avec chevauchement. La première observation est que le chevauchement n’apporte aucune réduction dans près de 25% des cas. Une analyse statistique permet de distinguer l’influence de caractéristiques de projets sur l’efficacité du chevauchement et de montrer que la proportion de couples d’activités chevauchables qui sont sur le chemin critique et la sévérité des contraintes de ressources ont le plus d’influence sur la réduction de la durée de projet. Également, les résultats indiquent que certains principes généraux se dégagent pour les décisions de chevauchement. La meilleure stratégie devrait consister à chevaucher peu de couples d’activités chevauchables et de les chevaucher beaucoup. De plus, même si les activités sur le chemin critique sont plus susceptibles d’être chevauchées, les décisions de chevauchement dans un contexte de contraintes de ressource ne doivent pas uniquement être basées sur la criticalité des activités. Enfin, ces observations sont confrontées aux stratégies pratiques de chevauchement proposées dans la littérature. Ces travaux visent à contribuer au développement d’outils pour assister les gestionnaires de projet dans leurs décisions relatives au chevauchement d’activités. Les principales contributions scientifiques de ces travaux sont les suivantes. Premièrement, nous proposons une modélisation plus réaliste du problème d’ordonnancement de projet avec chevauchement d’activités. Deuxièmement, une nouvelle métaheuristique de type recherche dispersée (« scatter search ») performante pour le problème classique RCPSP est développée. Troisièmement, nous introduisons des méthodes de résolution exacte et approchée performantes pour le problème d’ordonnancement de projet avec chevauchement d’activités. La capacité des méthodes exactes à résoudre des problèmes d’ordonnancement pour des projets de grande taille avec contraintes de ressource étant limitée, cette thèse présente en effet à notre connaissance la première méthode approchée de type métaheuristique pour ce problème. Quatrièmement, ces travaux quantifient et analysent l’effet de huit caractéristiques de projet sur l’efficacité du chevauchement d’activités pour diminuer la durée d’un projet. Enfin, nous proposons des principes généraux pour aide les praticiens à prendre les meilleures décisions de chevauchement d’activités.----------ABSTRACT : Activity overlapping is one of the most employed strategies used to accelerate project execution. It consists in relaxing the sequential execution of dependent activities by allowing downstream activities to begin before receiving all the final information required from upstream activities. Several practical strategies, such as concurrent engineering and fast-tracking construction, are based on the concept of overlapping. Overlapping has been demonstrated to be powerful for reducing project makespan, but it has some drawbacks. Overlapping often causes additional reworks in downstream activities, as well as iterations of interdependent activities, that are difficult to quantify and represent additional workloads and costs. Such reworks may outweigh the benefices of overlapping in terms of cost and time. This raises the question of when and to which extent overlapping should be applied. In practice, project teams determine overlapping strategies on an ad hoc basis without always considering rework and interaction between activities. This thesis considers the project scheduling problem with activity overlapping in a deterministic context. This problem aims to jointly determine the best schedule in terms of cost and duration and the best overlapping decisions, namely which activities should be overlapped and to which extent. We focus on the complex projects characterized by constraints on resource availability, a complex network of activities, a large number of activities and a large number of couples of overlappable activities. The main objectives of this thesis are to model, quantify and analyze the impact of overlapping decisions on the project performances (cost and duration) in the case of complex industrial projects, by considering a realistic model of the overlapping process. This thesis also aims at providing a better understanding of these decisions in complex projects and at guiding planners in improving existing practices. The research undertaken in this thesis is divided into three papers published or submitted to international peer-reviewed scientific journals. The first paper titled « Time-cost trade-offs in resource-constrained project scheduling problems with overlapping modes » (published in 2014 in International Journal of Project Organisation and Management) proposes an overlapping process model based on overlapping modes related to activities’ internal milestones that is a realistic and flexible model of the relation between the amount of overlap and the amount of rework. This overlapping model is then enclosed in a model for the time-cost trade-offs in resource-constrained project scheduling problem with activity overlapping. The model is formulated as a linear integer programming model. The times and costs for communication/coordination and reworks are considered. The problem is solved with an exact method for an illustrative project instance. The results highlight the interactions between the project total cost, its makespan and the severity of the resource constraints and also show their influence on the computational time. The second paper titled « A Path Relinking-based Scatter Search for the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem » (submitted to European Journal of Operational Research) introduces a metaheuristic based on scatter search for solving the standard RCPSP (Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem) without overlapping. This algorithm involves FBI (Forward-Backward Improvement), reversing the project network at each iteration and two new mechanisms. First, a bidirectional PR (path relinking method) with a new move is used as method for combining solutions. Second, a new improvement procedure is proposed in the reference set update method for enhancing the quality and the diversity of the reference set. An advanced parameter tuning method based on local search is employed. The paper shows that the proposed scatter search produces high-quality solutions in reasonable computational time and is among the best performing heuristic procedures in the literature for solving the instance of the PSPLIB benchmark.Finally, the main contributions of the third paper titled « Influence of the project characteristics on the efficiency of activity overlapping » (submitted to Computers & Operations Research) are to quantify and analyze the influence of eight project characteristics on the efficiency of activity overlapping for reducing project makespan. The reduction of the project makespan is obtained by solving the project scheduling problem with and without overlapping. Two methods have been developed for solving the problem with overlapping. First, we introduce a 0-1 integer linear programming model with overlapping modes and constraint propagation techniques as preprocessing. Second, we propose a metaheuristic based on the scatter search algorithm described in the second paper. These methods are applied on a set of 3888 project instances with overlapping composed of 30 to 120 activities. The first finding is that no reduction of the makespan is observed in about 25% of the projects of the benchmark. A statistical analysis is conducted to measure the effect of eight project parameters on the makespan gain. It reveals that the proportion of couples of overlappable activities on the critical path and the scarcity of the resource constraints have the highest influence on the makespan gain. In addition, general rules of thumb are derived from the analysis of the results. The best overlapping decisions should consist in overlapping only few couples of overlappable activities and to overlap them with a large degree of overlapping. Even though the activities on the critical path are more likely to be overlapped, overlapping decision should not rely solely on the criticality of the activities. The results are also compared to practical strategies for applying overlapping proposed in the literature. The main scientific contributions of these works with respect to the scientific literature and from the perspective of assisting project managers to choose the most appropriate overlapping decisions can be summarized as follows. First, we propose a more realistic model of the project scheduling problem with activity overlapping. Second, a new competitive metaheuristic based on scatter search has been developed. Third, we propose competitive exact and heuristic methods for solving the project scheduling problem with activity overlapping. Indeed, as the capacity of exact methods for solving project scheduling problem for large scale projects with resource constraints is limited, the metaheuristic developed in this thesis for this kind of problem is the first in the literature to our knowledge. Fourth, this thesis proposes to quantify and analyze the influence of eight project characteristics on the efficiency of activity overlapping for reducing project makespan. Finally, the findings of this work provide a better understanding of the overlapping decisions and should guide planners for the decisions on activity overlapping

Lean Product Development process structure and its effect on the performance of NPD projects

New product development (NPD) has a pivotal role in the industrial competition, and makes a basis for long‐term prosperity of companies. To survive in today's fast‐changing market environment, companies are always trying to improve the performance of their NPD projects, by implementing new approaches, such as Lean Product Development (LPD). Nevertheless, applying such approaches is not straightforward, mainly due to the high level of interdependency between development activities and the role of dynamic effects in the project performance. Understanding the combined effects of dynamic features, including feedback loops, time delays and nonlinear causal relationships, is the main step for achieving higher project performance. In this thesis, the dynamics of LPD process structure is investigated to find the ways it could affect the time, cost and quality performance of a development project. As there is no consensus about the definition of LPD among researchers in this filed, first through a comprehensive literature review different approaches to LPD are studied. Two major approaches for LPD are introduced based on the adaptation of lean manufacturing tools and techniques for optimizing NPD processes, or extracting LPD specific tools and techniques from Toyota Product Development System (TPDS). The second approach is proved to be more applicable, mainly due to fundamental differences between manufacturing and NPD environments, and the LPD process design based on TPDS is selected as the focal point for this research. The combination of Set‐Based approach to design and Concurrent Engineering in the form of SBCE is identified as the unique feature of LPD process structure which have been the topic of several researches in this field during past decade. Set‐based design approach calls for the higher number of iteration cycles at the front end of the projects, and is responsible for higher project effectiveness while increases the time and effort invested. On the other hand, concurrent engineering targets the project duration, and is an efficiency factor, but if not structured properly it could have an opposite effect through increasing the number of rework cycles. Although the performance of TPDS which is the best benchmark for LPD shows the positive effect of SBCE on the projects performance, the reasons behind it and the way through which two approaches could be structured to achieve the favourable results is not clear yet. In addition, while different types of new product development projects, based on VII their levels of complexity and innovation, are defined and executed in companies, it is not clear if SBCE approach has the same impact on all project types. To investigate the reasons behind the superiority of SBCE and its effects in different types of development projects the systems thinking approach is selected as the main research methodology to provide a holistic view on the development projects through looking on interdependencies between performance measures and process structure. System dynamics modelling is used as the research method, due to its capacity in modelling feedback loops and iteration and rework cycles, as underlying factors which determine the time, cost and quality performance in projects. The model is built based on verified structures for rework cycle and resource allocation as the platform for the model, and becomes more specific for the purpose of this research by adding structures related to the iteration cycles, number of initial concepts, and effect of project type. After passing the standard system dynamics validation tests, the model is calibrated using the historical project data from different projects in a major car manufacturing company. The calibrated and verified model then used for the policy analysis by defining different scenarios based on the number of iteration cycles during the conceptual design phase, number of initial concepts and the type of project. All types of projects show the improved performance metrics when moving towards the SBCE approach by increasing the number of iteration cycle. However, the degree of improvement for projects with higher levels of complexity is more profound. In addition, it is concluded for projects with the high level of complexity that increasing the number of initial concepts has the positive effect on all project performance measures. This research results have a methodological contribution by providing a method for rigorous representation of the impact of LPD process structure on projects performance through simulation. From the practical point of view, the developed model could be used by project managers as a guide for making informed decisions which guarantee the long‐term success of development projects

Towards a holistic lean product development framework

Companies consider product development (PD) their competitive lever to survive in a technology-fuelled and fast-paced environment. Lean Product Development (LPD) is a promising concept currently being adopted by companies focusing on maximising customer value, shortening lead times, and reducing costs in PD. This research initially concentrates on developing a comprehensive LPD framework which subsumes existing concepts and supersedes them by including findings from the wider PD research area. The investigation then leads into understanding the highly-interwoven, yet underinvestigated, character of LPD to pave the way for its implementation into the complex knowledge-based PD environment. The deduced systematic implementation plan, which both provides an appropriate level of detail and accounts for the inherent complexities of LPD, supports companies in their struggle to embrace Lean practices in PD. The LPD framework is developed by employing a content analysis of existing concepts and integrating insights from the wider PD environment. The relationships between the framework’s elements are investigated using the results of a self-administered questionnaire embedded in a cross-sectional research design and complemented by the fruitful discussions found in literature. The insights into the inner workings of the framework are subsequently appropriated to formulate general recommendations and an effective implementation plan

Overlapping and communication policies in product development

Shorter product life cycles in many industries impel firms to accelerate the product development process. Overlapping development stages, combined with frequent information exchange, is commonly regarded as a core technique for faster product development. However, overlapping and communication require additional resources and can be costly. We investigate the time-cost tradeoffs involved in concurrent product development to determine the optimal overlapping and communication strategies. The methodology was applied to a refrigerator development process in order to illustrate its utility.Product development Concurrent engineering Project management Overlapping Communication policy