Abstract

Effective planning of complex product design processes is often presented as critical for the timely delivery of a design project. Findings from industry interviews determined that most organizations create multiple plans when conducting a product design project. In addition, it was found that plans are typically created by multiple work teams and/or functional areas and often include the same or related content.

Even though there are many interdependencies between plans, it was suggested that changes to plans were most often communicated and implemented manually. This fact, plus responses from the interviewees gave indications that too often plans become nothing more then a tick box and not a productive asset for the successful completion of the design project. Understanding the realities of the planning system as it exists in today’s organizations, enables the opportunity to utilize and create tools to first determine a more efficient planning system and then use it more productively. To that effect, this presentation is an overview of the research and findings that have been done to date.

About the Author: Mark DeLessio is a PhD Candidate at the Cambridge Engineering Design Centre under the supervision of Professor John Clarkson: https://www-edc.eng.cam.ac.uk/people/mpd36.html