The impact of the geographic distribution of design engineers on the pace of engineering development

The increasing use of digital design tools and broadband information networks is creating an environment that permits the geographic distribution of design engineers. In order to successfully distributed engineering the consequences need to be understood. Through the examination of records of project execution, this thesis investigates whether the decision to geographically distribute engineers has a measurable impact on the pace of engineering development. A task-based Design Structure Matrix (DSM) was developed and showed that the projects studied were developed using a highly integral process. It is hypothesized the unanticipated consequences of distributing engineers geographically will slow the pace of engineering development to such an extent that costs incurred in protracted engineering development outweigh the benefits.

Department dc:contributor.department

System Design and Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Schiller, David (David Andrew), 1975-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ricardo Valerdi.

• 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/1721.1/35102

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35102