Product development risk management and the role of transparency

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-77).Risks in product development lead to schedule and cost over-runs and poor product quality. While numerous risk management frameworks have been published and research on specific risk management practices and methods has been conducted, there is little understanding of what the key characteristics of successful risk management in product development are. This research consists of two phases: an empirical study of the best practices in product development risk management, and a qualitative study of the role of transparency in the same. The results of a survey of over 200 product development practitioners in industry were analyzed. Of the 170 practices from the literature addressed in the survey, 36 best practices in product development risk management were identified. These best practices were categorized in to six groups: 1- Risk Management Personnel and Resources; 2- Tailoring and Integration of the Risk Management Process; 3- Risk-based Decision Making; 4- Specific Mitigation Actions; 5- Monitoring and Review, and; 6- ISO 31000 Principles. The best practices in these categories show strong evidence not only for achieving effective risk management, but also the ability to positively affect overall project stability and the achievement of the project cost, schedule, performance and customer satisfaction targets. All eleven of the ISO 31000:2009 Risk Management Standard principles (ISO 2009b) were found to be best practices of product development risk management, suggesting the standard is applicable to product development The practice with the highest correlation with product development success was found to be one of the eleven ISO principles: "risk management is transparent and inclusive." The second phase of this research aimed to qualitatively validate the observed correlation between transparency and product development success, through twelve semi-structured interviews with product development practitioners from industry. Transparency was found to be an essential feature of product development risk management Transparency of risk management is beneficial to product development in many ways: it is a vehicle for an accurate shared representation of the current state of the product development project, it facilitates stakeholder collaboration; it is a means of aligning efforts towards critical tasks. Requirements for and barriers to transparency were also explored. These results not only inform current product development practitioners on where to focus risk management efforts, but also contribute an empirical evaluation of the impact of specific risk management practices on product development success.by Alison L. Olechowski.S.M

Characteristics of successful risk management in product design

The paper reports results of one of the largest empirical studies to-date on the impact of design risk management practices on product design success. Through a survey of 224 practices, 38 (in 7 categories) where found to be statistically significant for at least 3 out of 4 performance metrics. The categories are: 1. Organizational Design Experience; 2. Risk Management Personnel and Resources; 3. Tailoring and Integration of Risk Management Process; 4. Risk-Based Decision Making; 5. Specific Mitigation Actions; 6. Monitoring and Review; and 7. Other ISO Risk Management Principles.King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT and KFUPM (R11-DMN-09))Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lean Advancement Initiativ

Characteristics and Enablers of Transparency in Product Development Organizations

Risks in product development lead to schedule and cost overruns and poor product quality. While many risk management frameworks have been published and research on specific practices has been conducted, little is understood of key characteristics of successful risk management in product development and how they manifest in real development projects. This research consists of two phases. The first phase is a survey on 171 best practices in risk management. Analysis of over 200 responses from industry practitioners identified transparency as a key characteristic of successful risk management in product development. Due to the limited exploration of the concept of transparency in the literature, the second phase of this work consisted of a qualitative investigation of transparency through interviews with 15 industry practitioners. Analysis of the interview results suggests a hierarchical structure which decomposes transparency into several characteristics and identifies enablers for each of these characteristics. We propose that transparency can be a valuable lever for product developers and managers. Future work is needed to validate the generalizability of the observations provided

Essays on decision-making in complex engineering systems development

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2017.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 123-130).This thesis presents three essays on the topic of tools for assessment and decisionmaking in complex engineering systems development. The first essay presents an extension to the design structure matrix, used to present and analyze the suite of tests a system undergoes at multiple levels of the architecture. This method decomposes the multilevel integration test suite - progressing from component to subsystem to system - and visually represents the test coverage. We demonstrate the new method on a subsea system at BP. The second essay presents a study of the current state of use of the technology readiness level method. We discovered, described and prioritized 15 challenges associated with assessing and using the technology readiness levels. We further discuss existing and potential solutions to these challenges. This paper is based on input from interviews at seven different organizations, and a survey of over 100 system engineers. System complexity related challenges were found to be particularly critical and currently without adequate solution. The final essay presents an expansion of our current understanding of the options available at a phase-gate review. Beyond the typical Go and Kill options, we describe the Waiver (with and without review), Delay and switch to a Back-up plan options. We show how it is feasible to extend a simple decision tree model to analyze the expected value of this broader set of options. We demonstrate this method with four case applications from industry.by Alison Olechowski.Ph. D

An Exploratory Study Comparing CAD Tools and Working Styles for Implementing Design Changes

© 2019 Design Society. All rights reserved. This paper presents the findings of a preliminary study comparing implementation of design changes using various computer-aided design (CAD) working styles. Our study compares individuals' and pairs' completion of a series of changes to a toy car CAD model. We discuss the results in terms of productivity and value added ratio, derived from time-based quantitative data. We also discuss qualitative findings acquired through post-study surveys. Overall, our findings suggest that pairs were less efficient than individual designers due to overheads like communication, history dependency and complex couplings within the CAD model tree. However, it is also noteworthy that within each pair the lead participant's performance was at par with individual participants. Lastly, we also discuss behaviors and patterns that emerge as unique to the synchronous collaborative environment, motivating future work