Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-116). / The research provides a case study of performance metrics within the framework of the product development process and team effectiveness. A comparative analysis of eight product development teams was done to evaluate the teams' effectiveness in achieving three outcomes - customer satisfaction, shareholder value and time to market. A survey was conducted to evaluate areas where no formal documentation existed and to supplement the existing historical data that were collected from databases and documents. The analysis was done on two levels - by program team and individual respondent - and looked at the level of performance and effort that influenced the specific outcomes. It was concluded that performance metrics are used within an organization to drive actions, to assess progress and to make decisions. Conclusions were consistent with the premise that people perform to how they are measured and that the team effectiveness can be driven by a set of performance metrics that are aligned with the strategic goal of the organization. Transformational metrics were developed within the framework of understanding the interdependence of the social and technical systems. Choosing the right metrics is critical to an organization's success because the metrics directly influence behavior and establish the culture within the firm. It was determined that if the right combinations of metrics are selected, teams will act in such a way as to maximize their effectiveness and behave in a manner that achieves the corporate goals. / by Dawn M. Robison. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 98). / by K. Hari Reddy. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, February 2000. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 74). / by Lynn M. Tinker. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-71). / The xerographic printing and copying industry has become extremely competitive. Xerox market share has gradually declined since the 1960s as the market share of corporations like Canon, Hewlett Packard and Ricoh has increased. In response to rising competition, various product architecture strategies are heralded as the means to gaining, or regaining, competitive advantage in this environment. Among the most popular of these strategies are platobrm strategy, product families and parts commonality, and outsourcing. The objective of this thesis is not to dispute the value of these strategies in the present context. Obviously, platform strategies and parts reuse enable firms to develop products faster and with less cost by leveraging previous investments. Likewise, in order to remain competitive in this environment, a firm can no longer afford to vertically integrate its products-clearly, firms can no longer afford to do everything themselves. Horizontal integration through outsourcing, or what Xerox calls extended enterprise, is therefore one source of competitive advantage. Platform strategy, parts reuse, and extended enterprise all make good sense but each of these strategies can easily backfire. In this paper we will examine these strategies and see how they relate to central themes in product architecture, such as, architectural modularity. Then we shall see how these strategies can, if not applied carefully, cause more problems than they attempt to resolve. Finally, in light of these problems, revised and more robust versions of these strategies are presented. / by David C. Craig. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2002. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Shui-Fang Chou. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, February 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-73). / by Khusrow M. Uzair. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-167). / External advice can be a valuable resource for founders of high technology startup companies. As with any resource, the pursuit and efficient use of the external advice resource is one of the greatest challenges for founders. This thesis examines how the founders of eleven US venture-backed high-tech companies leveraged external advice to their advantage. By aggregating data extracted from case-based interviews, the characteristics of advice are fully understood. In particular, insights are made into the types of advice these business focused founders received, the types of advisors they selected and considered influential to the development of their company and the way they were connected to these influential advisors. Organizing the data by companies' business characteristics enabled further insights to be drawn. Notably, there was a significant difference in a variety of the advice sought by first time founders compared with that of more experienced founding teams. First time founders received broader and more tactical advice than did experienced founders. Furthermore, first time founder's advisors were much more likely to act as coaches, instilling confidence and expending effort to mentor these first-timers into successful CEOs. Silicon Valley advisors and others affiliated with Silicon Valley companies were much more likely to introduce the founders to their influential network, which illustrates the rich entrepreneurial nature of Silicon Valley. There was no statistically significant difference in advice characteristics based on the size of their founding team or on type of their industry. Since the eleven companies are private and thriving, the selected performance metric was the amount of venture capital raised per year of existence. / (cont.) This less than ideal performance data clearly shows a positive correlation between the size and experience of the founding team with company performance. However, no correlation between company performance and industry and geography could be determined. Since the advice characteristics that were correlated with performance were similar to those of large experienced teams, it is reasonable to conclude that none of the advice characteristics are predictors of success. It follows rather that advice characteristics are more a reflection of the companies' business characteristics than itself a predictor of venture success. / by Nick Cravalho. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 81). / Project management is a crucial aspect of product development. There is a need for better project management tools to help product development teams meet their schedule, budget, and technical requirements more accurately with the given uncertainty of each product development project. This thesis is a case study of a Critical Chain implementation. The implementation included the creation of project networks and Critical Chain schedules for each development project studied in this thesis. Once the schedules were in place, the teams developed the products following Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM). The theory behind CCPM has merit but the culture change necessary to achieve a competitive was found challenging in practice. In this thesis, the author studied CCPM from two perspectives: project management and resource management. The team demonstrated both perspectives to an extent, but four months was not enough time. CCPM appeared to improve performance of each project, but the resource management goals of the thesis were not as successful. / James E. Weisheit. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 104-108). / The global automotive industry has entered a stagnating period. Automotive OEMs and their tier suppliers are struggling for business growth. One of the most important strategies is to improve the engineering efficiency in the product development process. The engineering uncertainties have been identified as the main obstacles in the Lean Engineering practices. This study will be focused on the engineering development process of ArvinMeritor Emission Technologies. The lean engineering principles and techniques are applied to the current product development process. The Value Stream Mapping and Analysis method is used to identify the information flow inside the current engineering process. Based on the value stream map, the uncertainties at various development stages in the process are identified. The Design Structure Matrix is used to identify any unplanned design iteration, which results in lower engineering efficiency. The House of Quality is used to prioritize the importance of the iterations. The suggested excel program can effectively evaluate the effect of task duration, probability, impact and learning curve assumption. / (cont.) In order to quantitatively predict the effects of the uncertainties, a System Dynamic model is specifically developed for the current engineering of Emission Technologies. The results clearly indicate the control factors for on-time delivery, efficient resource allocation, and cost reduction. This study has integrated the techniques from system engineering, system project management, and system dynamics. An improved automotive exhaust engineering process is proposed. / by Xitian Fang and Deming Wan. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-69). / by Jared D. Clark. / S.M.