Improving the Timeliness of Product Development Processes

通过使用更好的信息工具和更好的方法，如并行工程和系统思想，新产品开发（NPD）得到了很大的改善。这些改进提高了小型团队的生产力，因为他们使用相同的设计工具，快速沟通并快速解决问题，即，协调很容易。然而，在大型工程中，许多人和合作伙伴合作，仍然存在问题。问题不在于复杂项目中的工作量持续增加，而在于时钟在运行，而任务没有及时交付。研究表明，丰田和其他公司通过在新产品开发方面的优势而获得的竞争优势主要来自开发团队之间更好的协调。拟议研究计划的长期目标是确定哪些协调机制和组织结构可以通过专注于及时完成设计任务，特别是在多合作伙伴项目中，更快地交付产品。研究表明，航空航天和国防项目的设计人员将不到一半的时间用于增值活动。本研究将发展协调理论、新产品开发流程模型及以代理人为基础的模拟，以研究新产品开发流程的时效性。 目前的协调理论只从成本的角度来量化协调，即，通信网络的成本+信息交换+网络效率，其中协调是对依赖关系的管理。拟议的研究将开发一种理论来衡量协调的好处在时间方面：及时性的结构支持通信+时间的通信+响应时间的新产品开发过程。此外，多范式建模（基于代理+离散事件）将被用来研究协调机制和组织结构的特点，提高新产品开发过程中的及时性能。新产品开发过程模式将考虑合作伙伴之间活动的时间安排、信息交换的速度、资源结构和支持技术的使用。新产品开发过程的数据将从公司获得，以建立模型并验证结果。该研究还将研究敏捷方法（频繁的信息交换沿着频繁的可交付成果），以确定哪些功能允许这些技术成功地按时交付产品。研究的成果将是协调理论，可以衡量新产品开发过程中的成果的基础上的时间，以及协调机制和组织结构，可以改善新产品开发过程，及时交付成果。总的来说，将有一个更好的了解如何信息交流以及新产品开发过程和组织结构的设计，导致更好的项目交付。对工业的好处将是帮助他们按时交付产品的简单方法。

New product development (NPD) has been greatly improved through the use of better information tools and better methods, such as concurrent engineering and systems thinking. These improvements have increased productivity for small teams, since they use the same design tools, communicate quickly and resolve issues fast, i.e., coordination is easy. However, engineering-in-the-large, where many people and partners collaborate, is still problematic. The issue is not that effort continues to increase during a complex project, but that the clock is running while tasks are not delivered in a timely manner. Researchers have shown that the competitive advantage that Toyota and others have gained by their superiority in NPD mostly comes from better coordination among development groups. The long term goal of the proposed research program is to determine which coordination mechanisms and organizational structures can deliver products faster by focusing on the timely completion of design tasks, especially in multi-partner projects. Studies have shown that designers in aerospace and defence projects spend less than half of their time on value-added activities. The research will develop coordination theory, NPD process models and agent based simulation for the study of timeliness in NPD processes. Present coordination theory only quantifies coordination in terms of cost, i.e., the cost of the communication network + information exchange + network effectiveness, where coordination is the management of dependencies. The proposed research will develop a theory to measure the benefits of coordination in terms of time: timeliness of the structure supporting communication + time for communication + response time of the NPD process. In addition, multi-paradigm modelling (agent based + discrete event) will be used to study the characteristics of coordination mechanisms and organizational structures that improve timely performance in NPD processes. The NPD process model will consider the timing of activities among partners, the rate of information exchange, the structure of resources, and the use of support technologies. Data for NPD processes will be obtained from companies to build models and validate results. The research will also study agile methods (frequent information exchange along with frequent deliverables) to determine what features allow these techniques to be successful in delivering products on time. The outcomes of the research will be coordination theory that can measure NPD process outcomes based on time as well as coordination mechanisms and organizational structures that can improve the NPD process to deliver outcomes in a timely manner. Overall, there will be a better understanding of how information exchange as well as the design of NPD processes and organizational structures lead to better project delivery. Benefits to industry will be simple methods that help them deliver products on time.