Opportunities for improving the information intensive product development process

Product development is an inherently information intensive process. The quantities of information and the complexity of the development efforts both contribute to this state. To address this and other product development issues, the National Science Foundation and six sponsoring companies partnered to begin the MIT Center for Innovation in Product Development (CIPD). The incentive for this research was to evaluate the needs of the industry sponsors and critique the research strategy of the Information-Based Development (IBD) research thrust within CIPD. Twenty-six interviews were conducted at seven companies with products ranging in scope from electrical connectors on up to airplanes. The Voice of the Customer methodology was applied in assessing the information needs in product development. The following questions provided a framework for each interview. "Where do you see information-related problems or inefficiencies? How do they impact product quality and time to market? Which are the most critical?" Customer statements were grouped in an affinity diagram according to the KJ method as outlined by Jiro Kawakita. Current IBD research projects were then mapped into this diagram to highlight the unmet needs. Through this process, four areas of opportunity for improvement were identified: the awareness of available information for access, the complete capture of information, the ease of use of information in decision making, and the design of an information infrastructure which is appropriate for all stages in the development process.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1998

Author dc:creator

• Wasserlein, Heather Dawn

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Steven D. Eppinger.

• Mechanical Engineering

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/1721.1/9783

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9783