Impacts of Making Design Decision Sequence Explicit on NPD Projects in a Forest Machinery Company
DS 81: Proceedings of NordDesign 2014, Espoo, Finland 27-29th August 2014
Year: 2014
Editor: Miko Laakso, Kalevi Ekman
Author: Halonen, Nillo; Lehtonen, Timo; Juuti, Tero
Series: NordDESIGN
Institution: Tampere University of Technology, Finland
Section: Management and organization of design and development
Page(s): 702-711
ISBN: 978-1-904670-58-2
Abstract
The front-end of an NPD project is a challenging area due to lack of adequate information, limited time, multidisciplinary teams and concurrent engineering. In this kind of environment communication and knowledge sharing becomes critical. This paper introduces a method of mapping design decision sequence as used in an NPD project, which specifically addresses the challenges of front end product development. The objective of the paper is to present the empirical results of a case study conducted at a Finnish forest machinery company, analyzing the impact of making design decision sequence explicit by using a method of Product Structure-based Information Flow Modelling (PSIFM). The goal of PSIFM is to improve the management of NPD projects by supporting the shared understanding between different disciplines and reusing the existing design process knowledge.
Keywords: Design decision sequence, design process knowledge, project management