Information hiding in product development: the design churn effect

Abstract

Execution of a complex product development project is facilitated through its decomposition into an interrelated set of localized development tasks. When a local task is completed, its output is integrated through an iterative c ycle of system-wide integration activities. Integration is often accompanied by inadvertent information hiding due to the asynchronous information exchanges.We show that information hiding leads to persistent recurrence of problems (termed as the design churn effect) such that progress oscillates between being on schedule and falling behind. The oscillatory nature of the PD process confounds progress measurement and makes it difficult to judge whether the project is on schedule or slipping. We develop a dynamic model of work transformation to derive conditions under which churn is observed as an unintended consequence of information hiding due to local and system task decomposition. We illustrate these conditions with a case example from an automotive development project and discuss strategies to mitigate design churn.

Topology of large-scale engineering problem-solving networks

“…This characteristic reduces the amount and range of potential revisions that occur in the dynamic PD process, and thus increases the likelihood of converging to a successful solution. This empirical observation is found to be consistent with the dynamic PD model (using linear systems theory) developed in [5].…”

“…The high clustering coefficient of PD networks suggests an inherently modular organization of PD processes; i.e., the organization of the PD process in clusters that contain most, if not all, of the interactions PHYSICAL REVIEW E 69, 016113,2004 internally and the interactions or links between separate clusters is eliminated or minimized [1][2][3]. The dynamic model developed in [5] shows that a speed up of the PD convergence to the design solution is obtained by reducing or 'ignoring' some of the task dependencies (i.e., eliminating some of the arcs in the corresponding PD network). A modular architecture of the PD process is aligned with this strategy.…”

“…The scale-free nature of the outgoing communication links means that some tasks communicate their outcomes to many more tasks than others do, and may play the role of coordinators (or product integrators see [5]). Unlike the case of large numbers of incoming links, this may improve the integration and consistency of the problem solving process; thus reducing the number of potential conflicts.…”

“…As this missing or uncertain information becomes available, the tasks are repeated to either verify an initial estimate/guess or to come closer to the design specifications. This iterative process proceeds until convergence occurs [3][4][5].…”

Dealing with project complexity by matrix-based propagation modelling for project risk analysis

“…Second, they have shown that the robustness and stability of complex engineering systems is closely linked with the existence of hubs, and that the network behaviour is sensitive to its structure. In addition, eigenstructure or eigenvector analysis has been used for identifying key features in the engineering design iterations in (Smith and Eppinger 1997) and for exploring some hiding information in the complex product development projects in (Yassine et al 2003).…”