Multidisciplinary design problem solving on product development teams

This investigation, conducted under the auspices of the Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI), studied how engineers from different specialties interpret and communicate about technical design problems while working on product development teams. Data was collected on 98 cases via interviews with engineers at LAI member companies. For approximately one-third of the cases, two engineers with different backgrounds were interviewed, allowing comparisons to be made between their descriptions of the problems under study. For the remaining cases, one interview was conducted per case. The most important finding of this study was that engineers from different specialties do interpret the same problem differently. Specifically, two engineers were likely to evaluate the benefits or drawbacks of a potential solution using different sets of criteria. Thus, some design disputes were the result not of mutually exclusive needs but of a failure to recognize the different ways in which engineers were evaluating solutions to the problem. Furthermore, data collected during this study illustrated that in some cases these differences were the result of engineers addressing related, but unique problems. Therefore, a solution to one engineer's problem often created a new problem for another engineer on the team.

Department dc:contributor.department

Technology and Policy Program

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2001

Author dc:creator

• Bernstein, Joshua I. (Joshua Ian), 1974-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Thomas J. Allen.

• Technology, Management, and Policy 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/1721.1/8659

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8659