A decision support tool for predicting the impact of development process improvements

• This paper presents a method for simulating the impact of improvements to the engineering design process. The method can be used by managers and teams to prioritize the most valuable process improvements among several suggested ones, before they actually take place. The method is based on the design structure matrix (DSM) developed by Steward (1981), and an extension of DSM called the work transformation model developed by Smith and Eppinger (1997). We introduce two new concepts, total process time and simulated to-be/as-is ratio. Two applications are presented. The first, a gas turbine blade development process, illustrates the estimated gain of a process improvement, and evaluates the actual implementation. The second application, a buyer-supplier product development project, shows how the method could be used as a decision support tool in an inter-organizational context. Input to the process simulation comes from process descriptions and estimates of anticipated effects of process change at the activity level. Output shows the effect of such a change on a total process level.

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