Implementing variation risk management during product development

All manufactured systems exhibit some degree of variation. Manufacturing organizations should be aware of those parameters whose variation will impact product performance and customer satisfaction. Such parameters are called Key Characteristics. Their variation plays a large part in the success of manufacturing programs; planning for too little variation can lead to low production yields, while planning for too much variation can lead to over-design. The chance for low yields or over-design is referred to as variation risk. Although most companies realize the importance of understanding variation, many still have difficulty implementing variation risk management programs. For some the challenge lies in changing the organizational culture to operate in a concurrent engineering environment that implements variation risk management. For others who are ready to make the change, the challenge is more technical in nature: even if Key Characteristics can be identified, their variation may not be known, especially if used in a new product whose sub-systems have never been through the production line.

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Padgalskas, Nicholas (Nicholas Keith)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Daniel Whitney and Roy Welsch.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Mechanical Engineering.
• Leaders for Manufacturing Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39684

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39684