The implementation of concurrent engineering into many large
companies has greatly improved their product development processes.
These companies have seen significant gains in quality and customer
satisfaction with reduced product costs, defects, and time-to-market
(Lake, 1992). Many large companies have successfully employed this
relatively new product development philosophy. However, smaller
companies have not yet integrated this philosophy into their product
development systems with the success that larger companies have seen.
With small companies composing 98% of the manufacturing firms in this
country (U.S. Census Bureau, 1995), there has been a recent push for
the development of implementation methods for small companies. This
paper presents a five step approach that small manufacturing companies
can use to implement a concurrent engineering based product
development process. Our definition of a small manufacturing company
is an organization with 50 or fewer employees and net annual sales of 10 million dollars or less. The first step provides a general outline for companies to use in documenting their current product development process. The second step involves comparing the company's current product development process to a concurrent engineering based product development process model that is general enough for nearly all manufacturing firms. This step also includes the use of the theory of constraints and a so-called revised theory of constraints method to further refine the process understanding and description. Third, a new methodology for designing and applying process measurements is used to provide insight into the relationships that exists between the internal and external resources, requirements and deliverables of the product development process. It is during this step that the Process Measurement Matrix (PMM) is developed. Fourth, the PMM is used in conjunction with the analytical hierarchy process or a simple ranking technique to develop relative priorities. Finally, the appropriate measurements are constructed for each subprocess in the product development process. / Graduation date: 2001
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/33783 |
| Date | 26 May 2000 |
| Creators | Schlegel, Stephen C. |
| Contributors | Ulman, David G. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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