THE MEANING AND COHERENCE OF PROCESS, ORGANISATION AND PRODUCT IN ENGINEERING DESIGN

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Pulm, Udo | Clarkson, John

Affiliations: Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Abstract: Real design processes show a qualitative discrepancy to planned processes. There is also a large gap between processes and organisation structures. Understanding of product development as a complex social system, with a system theory background, gives insights into this issue. It seems that communication is more important than a controlled and transparent process. A dynamic organisa-tion with self-organising teams seems to be the more appropriate approach for process management in product development. Communication partly takes place via money. We will discuss why money cannot be used as a measure for process quality yet, but how it could be used. The paper also gives an impression how signposting and design structure matrices (DSMs) can contribute to this approach.

Keywords: system theory, complex systems, product development, process and organisation

Journal: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 55-66, 2005