MANAGEMENT OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS THROUGH INTEGRATED MODELING OF PRODUCT AND PROCESS INFORMATION

As the complexity of mechatronic products in particular has increased, the difficulty of managing development projects is steadily increasing. For better management of product development projects, this paper proposes an integrated model of product and process information. Most information in the proposed model is described by a multiple domain matrix (MDM) that consists of a domain mapping matrix (DMM) and a design structure matrix (DSM). Furthermore, to overcome the difficulty of acquiring information, this paper proposes methodologies of model-based assistance for model refinement, including multiple cyclic processes to continuously refine models. Computational methods to utilize the acquired model are also discussed. The proposed methods employ techniques on DSMs and DMMs to deliberate candidate development processes, incorporating manageability of design process and resource allocation. Therefore, the methods provide planners with an arena to consider the tradeoff between the development span and the difficulty of managing development processes. Finally, an example of a solar boat development project demonstrates the plausibility of the proposed methods