The Influence of New CAD System on Product Development Organization

最近以“实体建模”为特色的3D-CAD设备可以根据数字参数定义物理产品的几乎所有属性，包括其形状、大小和质量，并且具有可视化产品的能力。虽然旧的2D-CAD主要是为了提高现有开发过程和组织中单个设计项目的效率，但从最新的3D-CAD中获得的好处可能需要在开发过程中进行根本性的改变。本研究的目的是报告我们进行的问卷调查的结果，以确定引入这项新技术的潜在好处和问题。本文首先报告了3D-CAD扩散的总体模式，基于从169家日本机械相关制造公司获得的数据。然后，我们探讨了影响3D-CAD引入的组织因素，并实证检验了3D-CAD对各种绩效结果的影响。尽管近65%的样本公司已经引入了3D-CAD，但在公司或部门层面使用3D-CAD作为主要设计工具的公司甚至不到10%。为了确定这种缓慢传播的原因，我们比较了“早期采用者”和“其他人”之间的各种因素。我们发现，早期采用者倾向于将3D-CAD作为一种技术来改善不同职能部门和合作公司之间的信息交换，并促进并发开发过程。他们还认识到重新定义任务划分和重新分配人力资本的重要性。此外，早期采用者在引入3D-CAD方面有自上而下的流程和公司级专用项目；其他公司倾向于将引进计划委托给设计工程部门。这些发现表明，有一个“全局”优化的想法来改善整个开发过程，而不是在每个功能中进行“局部”优化，对于促进3D-CAD的引入是必要的。少

Recent 3D-CAD devices that feature 'solid modeling' can define virtually every attribute of a physical product, including its shape, size and mass, in terms of digital parameters, and has the ability to visualize the product. Whereas older 2D-CAD was aimed primarily at increasing the efficiency of individual design projects within existing development processes and organizations, the benefits accruing from the latest 3D-CAD may require a fundamental change in development processes. The objective of this study is to report results of our questionnaire survey that was conducted to identify potential benefits and problems associated with the introduction of this new technology.This paper first reports overall patterns of 3D-CAD diffusion, based on data obtained from 169 Japanese machinery-related manufacturing firms. Then, we explore organizational factors influencing 3D-CAD introduction, and empirically examine the impact of 3D-CAD on various performance outcomes.Our results shows that, … More although nearly 65% of sample companies have already introduced 3D-CAD, companies using 3D-CAD as a main design tool either at the corporate or the division level are even less than 10%. To identity the reason for this slow diffusion, we compare various factors between 'early adopters' and 'others'. We found that early adopters tend to capture 3D-CAD as a technology to improve information exchange between different functional departments and collaborative companies and promote concurrent development processes. They also recognize importance of redefining task partitioning and reallocating human capital. In addition, early adopters have top-down processes with corporate-level dedicated projects in introducing 3D-CAD ; other companies tend to delegate introduction initiatives to design engineering departments.These findings imply that having an idea of 'global' optimization to improve the entire development process, rather than 'local' optimization within each function, is necessary to facilitate 3D-CAD introduction. Less