Improving the Timeliness of Product Development Processes

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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.