Patterns of Product Development Interactions

Development of complex products and large systems is a highly interactive social process involving hundreds of people designing thousands of interrelated components and making millions of coupled decisions. Nevertheless, in the research summarized by this paper, we have created methods to study the development process, identify its underlying structures, and critique its operation. In this article, we introduce three views of product development complexity: a process view, a product view, and an organization view. We are able to learn about the complex social phenomenon of product development by studying the patterns of interaction across the decomposed elements within each view. We also compare the alignment of the interaction patterns between the product, process, and organization domains. We then propose metrics of product development complexity by studying and comparing these interaction patterns. Finally, we develop hypotheses regarding the patterns of product development interactions, which will be helpful to guide future research.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

A System Architecture-based Model for Planning Iterative Development Processes: General Model Formulation and Analysis of Special Cases

The development process for complex system is typically iterative in nature. Among the critical decisions in managing such process involves deciding how to partition the system development into iterations. This paper proposes a mathematical model that captures the dynamics of such iterative process. The analysis of two special cases of the model provides an insight into how such decision should be made.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

A System Architecture Approach to Global Product Development

Recent advances in engineering collaboration tools and internet technology have enabled the distribution of product development tasks to offshore sites and global outsourcing partners while still maintaining a tightly connected process. Most firms in complex engineering industries are indeed experimenting with various ways to structure their product development processes on a global basis. In this research, we have explored global product development structures from the perspectives of process flow and system architecture. We employ the design structure matrix method to display and explain these structures and our observations thereof. Through five case studies spanning electronics, equipment, and aerospace industries, we consider the interaction complexity inherent in various global work distribution strategies. We conclude the paper with a summary and directions for future research work

Teaching Design for Environment in Product Design Classes

The paper presents an approach to teaching design for environment (DFE) in the context of a product design and development course. The teaching method has been applied in our classes for graduate engineering, business, and design students. Our approach includes a step-by-step DFE process and utilizes a recent Herman Miller chair as a case study to illustrate the successful application of each step in the process. The DFE process steps are based on our research at Herman Miller and on several published studies that investigated the integration of DFE into the product development process and which we assembled into the step-by-step DFE process. Furthermore, the teaching method includes a new approach to life cycle thinking by relating the product life cycle to the natural life cycle in order to from a closed-loop system

Planning Design Iterations

Companies developing new products have a wide variety of product development (PD) processes from which to choose. Each process offers a different method of iteration to manage risk. Companies must therefore consider the nature and level of risks they face in order to determine the most appropriate iteration and PD process. This paper identifies principles of risk and iteration inherent in product development and then explains how several different PD processes manage risk through iteration. It explains current research on PD decision criteria and concludes by proposing a framework to help companies better select PD processes.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

Technology Readiness Levels at 40: a study of state-of-the-art use, challenges, and opportunities

The technology readiness level (TRL) scale was introduced by NASA in the 1970s as a tool for assessing the maturity of technologies during complex system development. TRL data have been used to make multi-million dollar technology management decisions in programs such as NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover. This scale is now a de facto standard used for technology assessment and oversight in many industries, from power systems to consumer electronics. Low TRLs have been associated with significantly reduced timeliness and increased costs across a portfolio of US Department of Defense programs. However, anecdotal evidence raises concerns about many of the practices related to TRLs. We study TRL implementations based on semi-structured interviews with employees from seven different organizations and examine documentation collected from industry standards and organizational guidelines related to technology development and demonstration. Our findings consist of 15 challenges observed in TRL implementations that fall into three different categories: system complexity, planning and review, and validity of assessment. We explore research opportunities for these challenges and posit that addressing these opportunities, either singly or in groups, could improve decision processes and performance outcomes in complex engineering projects

An experimental and analytical study of pantograph dynamics

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 1984.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING.Bibliography: leaves 68-70.by Steven Daniel Eppinger.M.S

Responsible design : recognising the impact of how we design

We live in a period during which human activity is the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Schoolchildren across the world take to the streets calling on all of us –individuals, businesses, and governments – to act responsibly for the future of humanity. University students demand education on doing well by doing good. Member states of the United Nations have committed to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Realising sustainable futures inclusive of a good information society certainly sounds attractive to students, business, and governments alike, and we certainly notice heightened awareness and a sense of urgency to tackle large-scale and interconnected challenges such as clean energy, global health, and well-being. Yet, the focus on complex, global challenges has perhaps made it more difficult for individual designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs to feel that their own actions can have a direct impact. Having said this, we also notice that many individuals, businesses, and governments are beginning to ask how might we foresee the impact of the physical and digital products, services, experiences and systems solutions we create. The term "responsible design" is now gaining traction. Still, we can all think of examples of 'successful design' that is harmful to people, damaging to the environment, or bad for our society. We need to recognise our responsibility to change this trajectory, learn from examples of responsible design, and accept the responsibility to make the necessary changes in our own design practice, to achieve system-level change, creating solutions that are regenerative in nature. Many of us are familiar with the 3-point design challenge — desirability, feasibility, and viability. These terms conveniently map to three critical disciplines closely associated with successful design — market, technical, and business. We believe that responsible design is now critical for successful design and thus needs to be part of our community’s discussion, curriculum, and practice. To achieve this goal, we must articulate what responsible design might mean and how we can act accordingly. We offer a definition of responsible design that focuses on responsible behaviour, environmental responsibility, and social responsibility. We illustrate these principles using examples drawn from energy, health care, food, automobile, consumer electronics, and other domains. We propose responsible design as a collective journey that requires the actions of individual designers and design teams. This transition will also affect the nature of innovation processes and the structure of organisations where they take place. The practice of responsible design offers the possibility to engage generations of designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, business, and policy makers to make a difference in our own society through our future products, services, and system solutions. Finally, based on a survey conducted in the lead-up to the conference, in this keynote, we provide a glimpse into how members of the worldwide Design Society are working with the Sustainable Development Goals in research, teaching, and societal outreach

Improving the Systems Engineering Process with Multilevel Analysis of Interactions

The systems engineering V (SE-V) is an established process model to guide the development of complex engineering projects (INCOSE, 2011). The SE-V process involves decomposition and integration of system elements through a sequence of tasks that produce both a system design and its testing specifications, followed by successive levels of build, integration, and test activities. This paper presents a method to improve SE-V implementation by mapping multilevel data into design structure matrix (DSM) models. DSM is a representation methodology for identifying interactions either between components or tasks associated with a complex engineering project (Eppinger & Browning, 2012). Multilevel refers to SE-V data on complex interactions that are germane either at multiple levels of analysis, e.g. component versus subsystem conducted either within a single phase or across multiple time phases, e.g. early or late in the SE-V process. This method extends conventional DSM representation schema by incorporating multilevel test coverage data as vectors into the off diagonal cells. These vectors provide a richer description of potential interactions between product architecture and SE-V integration test tasks than conventional domain mapping matrices (DMMs). We illustrate this method with data from a complex engineering project in the offshore oil industry. Data analysis identifies potential for unanticipated outcomes based on incomplete coverage of SE-V interactions during integration tests. Additionally, assessment of multilevel features using maximum and minimum function queries isolates all the interfaces that are associated with either early or late revelations of integration risks based on the planned suite of SE-V integration tests