EVALUATING THE RISK OF CHANGE PROPAGATION
Year: 2011
Editor: Culley, S.J.; Hicks, B.J.; McAloone, T.C.; Howard, T.J. & Dong, A.
Author: Oduncuoglu, Arman; Thomson, Vincent
Series: ICED
Section: Design Methods and Tools Part 2
Page(s): 114-125
Abstract
The ever changing trends in current markets along with customers’ rising demands for quality require many companies to continuously develop new products. Many companies use iterative design to add new features to old products. The changes from the iterative approach along with the usual changes demanded by customers and made by engineers have created a difficult environment to manage. In this environment, many changes drive other changes in the product. This paper develops a technique to evaluate the risk of change propagation by using functional analysis, domain mapping matrix (DMM), and component design structure matrix (C-DSM) methods. This technique obtains the change propagation risk for a conceptual design solution at a functional level and provides insight for future resource requirements (i.e., development effort, product cost, etc.). The objective of the technique is to increase product knowledge in the early stages of design, to provide insight on the effects of engineering change, and to support design engineers in decision making.
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