Improving outcomes in outsourced product development: a joint consultant-client perspective

Although firms increasingly outsource front end product development activities to production suppliers or design consultants, this practice has received little scholarly attention. The few existing academic studies report high failure rates but generally present only the client firms’ view of the causes. Our first results from in-depth interviews of both clients and consultants give a richer picture of enablers of success and causes of failure. We confirm some previous findings(internal divisions within the client, “poor communication” between parties),identify new ones (inadequate client capabilities, failure to transfer design intent), and combine them into a comprehensive model of outsourced product development that includes negotiating project scope, continuously managing expectations, and carefully re-integrating the design output into the client’s operations. Finally, we classify several types of client dependency (need for new ideas, extra capacity, or specific technical expertise) and highlight the particular hazards associated with each

Degree Correlations and Motifs in Technological Networks

Recent network research has sought to characterize complex systems with a number of statistical metrics, such as power law exponent (if any), clustering coefficient, community behavior, and degree correlation. A larger goal of such research is to obtain insight into the systems’ functions by means of these and similar analyses. In this paper we examine network models of mechanical assemblies. Such systems are well understood functionally. We show that they have both rich and varied community structure as well as negative degree correlations (disassortative mixing), and show that this can be explained by additional powerful constraints that arise from identifiable first principles. In addition, we note that their main “motif” is closed loops (as it is for electric and electronic circuits), a pattern that conventional network analysis does not detect but which is used by software designed to aid in the design of such systems. The implication is that functional understanding of complex systems requires considerable domain knowledge beyond what typical network analysis tools employ

Connectivity Limits of Mechanical Assemblies Modeled as Networks

This paper applies network connectivity analysis to mechanical assemblies. Assemblies have extensive intentional structure while simultaneously displaying some of the properties of previously analyzed networks. Fundamental principles impose restrictions on the structure of assemblies, as do some practical principles. Fundamental restrictions stem from the desire to avoid over-constraining the assembly. Practical restrictions stem from the desire to limit the complexity of the assembly or any significant subassembly. These restrictions play a role analogous to the cost of connection. For these reasons, mechanical assemblies are unlikely to exhibit scale-free properties common in many natural systems and some man-made ones

Combating System-Level Quality Problems in Complex Product Development

As products become more complex and their development involves more technologies, people, and companies, it is no longer sufficient to ensure that each part, component, or subsystem is designed and made correctly. Problems that involve many distinct elements can still arise, even if each is designed according to the specifications. Practitioners speak of Murphy’s Law and “sneak paths,” while academics refer to “emergent properties” and “undocumented interactions.” The goal of this paper is to look at this problem from the outside, focusing on Ford and two non-competing companies whose products are also complex: United Technologies and Boeing. Interviews were conducted with senior management and lower level supervisors, focusing on both official processes and anecdotal reports on what works and what does not

Physical Limits to Modularity

Architecture, specifically the definition of modules and their interconnections, is a central concern of engineering systems theory. The freedom to choose modules is often taken for granted as an essential design decision. However, physical phenomena intervene in many cases, with the result that 1) designers do not have freedom to choose the modules, or 2) that they will prefer not to subdivide their system into as small units as is possible. A distinction that separates systems with module freedom from those without seems to be the absolute level of power needed to operate the system. VLSI electronics exemplify the former while mechanical items like jet engines are examples of the latter. It has even been argued that the modularity of VLSI should be extended to mechanical systems. This paper argues that there are fundamental reasons, that is, reasons based on natural phenomena, that keep mechanical systems from approaching the ideal modularity of VLSI. The argument is accompanied by examples

Growth Patterns of Subway/Metro Systems Tracked by Degree Correlation

Urban transportation systems grow over time as city populations grow and move and their transportation needs evolve. Typical network growth models, such as preferential attachment, grow the network node by node whereas rail and metro systems grow by adding entire lines with all their nodes. The objective of this paper is to see if any canonical regular network forms such as stars or grids capture the growth patterns of urban metro systems for which we have historical data in terms of old maps. Data from these maps reveal that the systems' Pearson degree correlation grows increasingly from initially negative values toward positive values over time and in some cases becomes decidedly positive. We have derived closed form expressions for degree correlation and clustering coefficient for a variety of canonical forms that might be similar to metro systems. Of all those examined, only a few types patterned after a wide area network (WAN) with a "core-periphery" structure show similar positive-trending degree correlation as network size increases. This suggests that large metro systems either are designed or evolve into the equivalent of message carriers that seek to balance travel between arbitrary node-destination pairs with avoidance of congestion in the central regions of the network. Keywords: metro, subway, urban transport networks, degree correlationComment: Updated ref [6]. Added equation to Appendix

Designing a Requirement Driven Product Development Process

This paper presents a technique to obtain a Design Structure Matrix (DSM) from a Design Matrix (DM). This technique enables us to obtain the design information flow pattern at early stage of the design, and apply the DSM system analysis and management techniques at the time when the most important decisions about the system and the design are made. The validity of this method is proven using a case study on the design integration process of an electrostatic chuck used in semiconductor wafer processing. The algorithm underlying this technique is also proven logically and mathematically to be valid

Asymmetry in in-degree and out-degree distributions of large-scale industrial networks

Many natural, physical and social networks commonly exhibit power-law degree distributions. In this paper, we discover previously unreported asymmetrical patterns in the degree distributions of incoming and outgoing links in the investigation of large-scale industrial networks, and provide interpretations. In industrial networks, nodes are firms and links are directed supplier-customer relationships. While both in- and out-degree distributions have "power law" regimes, out-degree distribution decays faster than in-degree distribution and crosses it at a consistent nodal degree. It implies that, as link degree increases, the constraints to the capacity for designing, producing and transmitting artifacts out to others grow faster than and surpasses those for acquiring, absorbing and synthesizing artifacts provided from others. We further discover that this asymmetry in decaying rates of in-degree and out-degree distributions is smaller in networks that process and transmit more decomposable artifacts, e.g. informational artifacts in contrast with physical artifacts. This asymmetry in in-degree and out-degree distributions is likely to hold for other directed networks, but to different degrees, depending on the decomposability of the processed and transmitted artifacts.Comment: in Structure and Dynamics, 8, 201

Is the Make-Buy Decision Process a Core Competence?

Many of today's products are so complex that no single company has all the necessary knowledge about either the product or the required processes to completely design and manufacture them in-house. As a result, most companies are dependent on others for crucial elements of their corporate well-being. Typically, however, companies have some choice as to whom they become dependent upon and for what sorts of skills and competences. That is, although few companies can "do it all," most have significant influence over the strategic choice of corporate identity and what businesses to be in. What is the range of choices they face? How are different companies making those choices? Can we make sense of the variety of decisions we can observe now in different industries or different parts of the world? What are the skills that companies must retain? In this paper we address the challenge of making these choices rationally. We give examples in which similar companies, facing similar choices, select make/buy patterns in very different ways, resulting in very different patterns of interdependencies along companies' supply chains. These choices are not restricted to skills related to the product, but include choices related to key design and manufacturing issues. To make sense of these differences, we propose a framework that ties together the following engineering and management concepts into one coherent view: 1) core competencies 2) the product development process 3) systems engineering 4) product architecture and modularity, and 5) supply chain design.ONR and various MIT programs including Leaders for Manufacturing, International Motor Vehicle Program, Industrial Performance Center, Japan Program, International Center for Management of Technology

The problem pf introducing the tank into the British Army during the War of 1914-1918

Thesis (B.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, 1960.MIT copy bound with: A study of the concept of continuity through the philosophy of G.W.F. Von Leibniz. 1960.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-95).by Daniel E. Whitney.B.S