Development of a system dynamics based management flight simulator for new product development

All firms in any mature product development industry are being pressured into performing 'better, faster, and cheaper' by both customers and competitors. In short, firms are being tasked with doing more, with less, faster. This leads to product development organizations being unrealistically tasked to deliver on these programs that often lead to projects falling behind schedule, over budget, and with inadequate quality. While striving to do the right actions to survive, the management of these firms may be leading their firms to disaster through over commitment, and short-term management actions to address the quality, budget, and schedule shortfalls. An understanding of the system dynamics associated with the program management of new product development (NPD) programs is essential to reversing this trend. Several corporations are instituting system dynamics in their management and executive training curricula to affect correct policies, procedures, and behaviors that lead to success. However, because the correct policies, procedures, and behaviors as revealed by system dynamics analysis are counter-intuitive and opposite those policies currently employed in program management, a method is needed to drive the learning of system dynamics so that it becomes ingrained in the program management thought processes. A management flight simulator (MFS) of the program management of a new product development project based on system dynamics provides the hands on experience that managers can learn the consequences of non systems-thinking policies on project performance and how system dynamics based policies can lead to greater success. This thesis provides an overview of the system dynamics of project management in new product development and insight into the

Department dc:contributor.department

System Design and Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• MacInnis, Daniel V., 1964-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nelson P. Repenning.

• System Design and Management 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/1721.1/34732

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34732