CAREER: Variation Risk Management Early in the Product Development Process

这笔赠款为在产品开发的早期阶段管理变异风险的工具和方法的开发提供资金。这些方法将使用一个共同的模型集，通过将风险领域的识别、失败的后果和可能性以及制定减轻风险的战略联系起来，实现对变化管理的综合方法。通过确定产品的系统级关键特征(KCs)--对产品有重大影响的产品特征、制造工艺参数和装配特征--并将它们向下传递到影响产品的特征，将实现差异风险识别。风险的可能性将通过在模型中传播预期变化来衡量。这些衡量标准将用于衡量一组系统级KC的相对重要性，并开始确定降低风险的最佳方法。还将开发工具来衡量不确定情况下变化风险的可能性和后果。这项研究将制定三种风险缓解策略：改变产品架构以创建更健壮的设计，改进制造过程以减少投入差异，和/或实施测量计划以跟踪生产中的差异。这些工具将用于优化成本最低的缓解战略的选择。及早识别和缓解变异风险将使产品开发人员能够增加产品的复杂性，缩短设计周期，提高产品的成本和质量。具体地说，这些方法将减少变化的几个后果--设计更改、制度化的返工和低质量。集成模型的使用将使组织能够在整个产品开发和生产过程中有效地管理风险。量化方法的使用将提高风险管理过程的效率和准确性。

This grant provides funding for the development of tools and methods to manage variation risk during the early stages of product development. The methods will use a common model set to enable an integrated approach to variation management by linking identification of risk areas, the consequence and likelihood of failure as well as the development of strategies to mitigate risk. Variation risk identification will be achieved by identifying the system level Key Characteristics(KCs) of a product -- the product features, manufacturing process parameters, and assembly features that significantly affect a product -- and flowing them down to the contributing features. The likelihood of risk will be measured by propagating the expected variation through the model. These measures will be used to weight the relative importance of a set of system level KCs and begin to determine the best approach for mitigating risk. Tools to measure the likelihood and consequence of variation risk under uncertainty will also be developed. Three risk mitigation strategies will be developed by this research: change the product architecture to create a more robust design, improve the manufacturing process to reduce the input variation, and/or implement measurement plans to track variation in production. The tools will be used to optimize the selection of the lowest cost mitigation strategy. The early identification and mitigation of variation risk will enable product developers to increase product complexity, reduce design cycle times, and improve the cost and quality of the products. Specifically, these methods will reduce several consequences of variation--design changes, institutionalized rework, and low quality. The use of the integrated models will enable an organization to effectively manage risk throughout the development and production of the product. The use of quantitative methods will improve the efficiency and accuracy of the risk management process.