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The design structure matrix (DSM) is a powerful tool for visualizing, analyzing, innovating, and improving systems, including product architectures, organizational structures, and process flows. Akin to a traditional N 2 chart and the System-System matrix (SV-3) in the DoD Architecture Framework (DoDAF), the DSM is a square matrix showing relationships between system elements. These elements can be components, teams, activities, or others. By analyzing the DSM, one can prescribe a better (e.g., more modular) system architecture. Adding a time-basis enables one to prescribe a faster, lower-risk process. Because the DSM highlights process feedbacks, it helps identify iterations and rework loops-key drivers of cost and schedule risk. The DSM is concise and visually appealing and is used in many organizations across diverse industries. Over the past decade the DSM has gained popularity. Users have found the tool extremely useful for fostering architectural innovation and enabling the situation awareness and empowerment that motivates the people executing complex processes. This tutorial introduces the DSM and three distinctive applications useful to product developers, systems engineers, and project and program managers. Real-life examples are presented from the aerospace, automotive, semiconductor, and other industries. Participants will engage in hands-on exercises and come away with a clearer understanding of the drivers of some critical, emergent behaviors in systems.

This research is aimed at structuring complex design projects in order to develop better products more quickly. We use a matrix representation to capture both the sequence of and the technical relationships among the many design tasks to be performed. These relationships define the "technical structure" of a project which is then analyzed in order to find alternative sequences and/or definitions of the tasks. Such improved design procedures offer opportunities to speed development progress by streamlining the inter-task coordination. After using this technique to model design processes in several organizations, we have developed a design management strategy which focuses attention on the essential information transfer requirements of a technical project.

Product architecture knowledge is typically embedded in the communication patterns of established development organizations. While this enables the development of products using the existing architecture, it hinders the organization's ability to implement novel architectures, especially for complex products. Structured methods addressing this issue are lacking, as previous research has studied complex product development from two separate perspectives: product architecture and organizational structure. Our research integrates these viewpoints with a structured approach to study how design interfaces in the product architecture map onto communication patterns within the development organization. We investigate how organizational and system boundaries, design interface strength, indirect interactions, and system modularity impact the alignment of design interfaces and team interactions. We hypothesize and test how these factors explain the existence of the following cases: (1) known design interfaces not addressed by team interactions, and (2) observed team interactions not predicted by design interfaces. Our results offer important insights to managers dealing with interdependences across organizational and functional boundaries. In particular, we show how boundary effects moderate the impact of design interface strength and indirect team interactions, and are contingent on system modularity. The research uses data collected from a large commercial aircraft engine development process.product architecture, product development organizations, technical communication, design structure matrix, statistical network analysis

Intense competition in many industries forces manufacturing firms to develop new, higher quality products at an increasingly rapid pace. Overlapping product development activities is an important component of concurrent product development that can help firms develop products faster. However, since product development activities may be coupled in complex ways, overlapping interrelated activities can present many difficulties. Without careful management of the overlapped product development process, the development effort and cost may increase, and product quality may worsen. This paper goes beyond the common recommendation to simply overlap activities as much as possible. We present a model-based framework to manage the overlapping of coupled product development activities. The model and framework identify conditions under which various types of overlapping are appropriate for a pair of coupled activities. We illustrate the model and framework with industrial applications involving the development of electronic pagers and automobile doors.product development, concurrent engineering, overlapping