They allow project and engineering managers to model sequential and parallel tasks but not interdependent tasks, where a set of tasks is dependent on one another. In this segment we'll review how project managers today are forced to deal with these problems, as well as common misperceptions about concurrent development. The DSM approach to managing large product design and development projects is an information exchange model which allows the project or engineering manager to represent important task relationships in order to determine a sensible sequence for the tasks being modeled. Included is an exercise involving the creation of a simple matrix of tasks and sequencing a design structure matrix to create a modified task schedule. The Four Critical Problems of Complex Product Design and Development 1.
Iterations can also be unpredictable, unplannable and impossible to anticipate.
To develop a complex product or large engineering system, project managers commonly decompose the design problem into smaller sub-problems which may in turn be further decomposed. Development teams are then assigned to each design problem or sub-problem. In this segment, you will learn about a process for coordinating engineering activities at each level in order to achieve an integrated system in the final product. You can create a DSM-based map of the physical interactions between the components to represent the structure of the system integration problem. Alternatively, you can map the personal communications between the people who design the components to capture the structure of the integration problem for the system as a whole.