Re-engineering the product development process with ‘design for X‘

Author(s):  
G Q Huang ◽  
K L Mak

Shortcomings of sequential engineering and advantages of concurrent engineering in product development have become better understood. However, the transformation from a sequential engineering environment to a concurrent engineering environment remains challenging. A dynamic transformation approach by combining the focused application of ‘design for X’ (DFX) with the extensive use of business process re-engineering (BPR) is discussed in this paper. The main role of DFX is to provide the drive, focus, vision and concurrence necessary for BPR, while the main role of BPR is to institutionalize good practice and make improvement permanent and continuous.

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 210-221
Author(s):  
Gyesik Oh ◽  
Yoo Suk Hong

Many companies adopt concurrent engineering in their product-development projects in order to reduce time to market. Concurrent engineering requires careful management, since the uncertainty of transferred information leads to rework and renders a development process complex. Most of the existing studies on concurrent engineering have analyzed overlapping between two activities. The present study expanded the research scope by modeling the developmental process of the concurrent execution of multiple activities as the result of management decisions, the overlapping ratio, and the information transfer frequency. When multiple activities are overlapped, it is more difficult to model a development process, since the uncertainty of cascaded information has impacts on many activities. The quantitative model developed in the present study provides insights into the uncertainty of information and the product-development process. Based on the generalized process model for multiple-activity overlapping, the optimal decision to minimize project duration was considered. As a solution to the dilemma of the high computational burden of considering all feasible decision sets, this paper proposes a myopic heuristic. The project management heuristic proposed in this paper is intended to assist managers in the decision-making process, as well as reducing the intermediate deadlines in project main plan.


Author(s):  
Tianyi Cai ◽  
Theodor Freiheit

Lean value creation requires a value-adding network of lean activities across the whole Product Development Process (PDP). Management needs to allocate resources and properly control the process to create the value that stakeholders desire. Leading companies in industry have successfully applied Set-Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) for lean PDP. In SBCE, designers propose several feasible solutions and develop them relatively independently and in parallel, and then gradually narrow the sets of solutions based on updated project feedback at each stage-gate design review. As an important lean concept with many advantages, SBCE has constraints that can jeopardize lean value creation. For instance, it is unclear how resources are allocated to each stage, different functional teams, and different value creation activities related to different kinds of value, which can cause waste of talent, time, and money. This paper focuses on how resources can be allocated to SBCE by viewing product development activities as value creation cells. Under management control, lean value creation activities use knowledge and other resources to produce valuable design solutions. A mathematical feedback control model is proposed to illustrate how management can invest resources for the value creation process. This model can be used to explore resource allocation to functional teams and processes according to a holistic value creation project development strategy and the optimal creation of lean value.


Author(s):  
G. Drieux ◽  
J.-C. Le´on ◽  
N. Chevassus ◽  
F. Guillaume

The Digital Mock-Up (DMU), which is a comprehensive numerical model describing the final manufactured product, is today widely used in the industry (like the automotive and aeronautic industries) to support the concurrent engineering organizations and processes. On the other hand, simulation helps in the development of a product for design decision making or validation purposes. It allows to determine, with the appropriate level of accuracy, the behavior of the future product under a specific environment or set of exterior actions. Virtual Reality (VR) applications are simulations where the focus is on immersion and interaction with the product. However, there is still lacks in the integration of simulation within the product development phases. In particular the link between the DMU and the numerical models for simulation in the large is often hardly achieved. For some types of simulation, it is even inexistent. In this paper, we propose a new object, the Downstream Digital Mock-Up (DDMU), based on a polyhedral representation, and we show that it can be a support for the integration of a subset of simulation activities within the product development process by making the link between the DMU and these simulations. In the particular case of VR, we show that this object is particularly adapted. One particularity of the DDMU is to be prepared for a specific target application, defined by its objectives and the context in which it is immersed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amran Rasli ◽  
Saif ur Rehman Khan ◽  
Tan Owee Kowang

Taking into account the customers, supplier and organization involvement in the new product development (NPD), this article focuses on the synthesis, evaluation, and selection of various sub-factors of concurrent engineering involved in new product development process. The aim of this study was to provide the reliability and validity of six sub-factors of concurrent engineering model of the 49-item questionnaire and to analyze its association with concurrent engineering and new product development process in a sample of 35 manufacturing and services organization located in Johor, Malaysia. Methods: A self reported survey was conducted in 35 manufacturing and services organization located in Johor, Malaysia. Results: Appropriate internal consistencies of the six sub-scales: customers relationship, team development, continuity, tools and techniques, suppliers involvement and corporate focus and their association with concurrent engineering, were obtained. Zero-order correlation and regressions analysis replicated the theoretically assumed structure of the effective concurrent engineering (ECE). Evidence of criterion validity was obtained from cross-correlations of the scales and from their linear and multiple regression analysis. Finally, all seven scales were associated with a highly significant ratio of concurrent engineering as predicted by fundamental theory. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study the seven version of the model, questionnaire is considered a reliable and valid instrument for measuring association in developing the new complex product development process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-93
Author(s):  
Anna Svirina ◽  
Ekaterina Polosukhina

AbstractResearch purpose. The purpose of this study is to analyse the influence of industrial enterprises’ employees’ motivation to innovate on the results of innovation process and the quality of innovative products market performance. The need for such an assessment was inspired by the lack of understanding the role of motivation to innovate in the quality and success of innovation development process.Design/Methodology/Approach. To achieve this goal, the authors conducted a survey distributed to the industrial enterprise employees. The study was based on the paper-and-pencil survey that was distributed to 250 people involved in innovation development process at Russian industrial enterprises; 150 questionnaires were received back and considered valid for the study. The results were evaluated by means of statistical analysis performed by means of SPSS Statistics software.Findings. The results support the intuitive proposition that motivation to innovate influences the quality of new product development process: idea generation, market study, product development, pre-commercial financial analysis and commercialisation quality are influenced by motivation to innovate – which is in line with the literature (Cooper, 2013). At the same time, probability on new product development in the company, the quality of initial screening, preliminary technical analysis, preliminary production analysis and in-house product testing do not correlate with employee motivation to innovate. Same is true for the new product performance: we observed no correlation between the motivation to innovate and the market success, whereas correlation was revealed between the innovative motivation and the level of market competition for the new product; however, the graphical analysis allowed to estimate that in case employees with high motivation to innovate are absent in the company, it is very unlikely that the new product would be successful.Originality/Value/Practical implications. The study was based on a questionnaire that was used for relevant purposes in different countries in order to make cross-country comparison on the innovation development process and the role of motivation to innovate. It allowed to indicate the specific features of organisational culture that are outlined in the Russian management literature: in majority of cases, bottom-level innovative initiatives were not supported by the management (Prigozhin, 2007), and hence, motivation to innovate cannot be revealed by employees at every stage of the new product development process. Another reason for somewhat controversial findings of this study was the difference between organisational cultures of the analysed manufacturing enterprises, which was not evaluated in this article.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document