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Planning development processes for complex products

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Abstract

Efficient planning of design processes is of critical importance to meet tight deadlines and budgets; and the development of process planning tools is a lively research area. This paper describes current planning practice in industry and the challenges associated with it. In industry, a multitude of plans are used in parallel each focussing on a different aspect. The units of planning and their resulting plans roughly fall into product plans considering cost, bill of materials and procurement considerations; process plans including different milestone, lead-times, task and activity plans; and quality plans. Over the course of a project, the same plan can serve as a prescriptive plan defining steps in the process, a target plan against which process is measured, and a record of the process. This paper argues that organisations work because individuals use more than one plan and have a tacit understanding of the relationships between these plans. Variations between different companies are discussed before the paper concludes with a reflection on implication for planning support.

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Notes

  1. See also http://www.idef.com/.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant GR/R64100/01) for funding this research. We are indebted to the numerous designers we interviewed and also the designers and design managers with whom we discussed our findings. We are very grateful to David Wynn, Tomas Flanagan, Martin Stacey and Iestyn Jowers for commenting on earlier versions of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Design Group, DDEM, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

    Claudia M. Eckert

  2. Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CP2 1PZ, UK

    P. John Clarkson

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  1. Claudia M. Eckert
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  2. P. John Clarkson
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Correspondence to Claudia M. Eckert.

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Eckert, C.M., Clarkson, P.J. Planning development processes for complex products. Res Eng Design 21, 153–171 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-009-0079-0

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