9634768 Ullman This grant provides funding for the development of metrics usable by practicing engineers and managers to evaluate and improve the product development process. These metrics will measure the current process, point to potential process inefficiencies, and assist in the evaluation of new best practices. The metrics will be based on characterizing the information evolution and decision structure used during product development. The concept of design process robustness will be developed as a foundation for the measures. When non-robust processes are identified, guidelines developed during this research will provide opportunities for improvement and the ability to document the potential for increased design process efficiency. Product-based industries are under continuous pressure to design and produce new, and increasingly higher quality, products in less time and with fewer resources. With this pressure has come the realization of the importance of a known and managed product development process. Many large companies have spent considerable time and effort documenting their development process. Integrated within the process are many industry-wide best practices (for example, quality function deployment, functional modeling, design of experiments, design for assembly). Many small companies have only just begun to identify and attempt to control the processes that determine the evolution of their products. Both large and small companies need better tools for measuring the product design process Standards, like ISO-9000, require a product development process but give no guidance on how to develop, measure and ensure the usefulness of such a process. This research will result in tools usable by industry for self assessment and guidance to improve their product design process.
