TECHMAN: Organizing the Tasks in Complex Design Projects

Information

• NSF Award
• 9007062

Owner

• The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc.

• Award Id

  9007062

• Award Effective Date

  9/1/1990 - 33 years ago

• Award Expiration Date

  8/31/1992 - 31 years ago

• Award Amount

  $ 100,005.00

• Award Instrument

  Standard Grant

This research is aimed at organizing complex design projects in order to perform faster product development. A variation of Steward's design structure matrix is used to represent both the sequence of and the technical relationships among the many design tasks to be performed. These relationships define the "technical structure" of a design project. Analytical techniques to find alternative sequences and definitions of the design tasks will be developed, offering opportunities to speed development progress by improved coordination and information transfer. These algorithms will consider the technical structure of a project in order to identify which tasks should be resequenced and which tasks should be redefined or split into smaller sub-tasks to avoid development bottlenecks. These techniques will be developed into a strategy for design management which can significantly reduce the overall project complexity by reorganizing the few critical tasks. It is expected that this research will benefit not only new design tasks that have never been structured before but also long-standing, often repeated design tasks that may have drifted into poor organization patterns over many years.

• Program Officer

  Senior Program Assistant

• Min Amd Letter Date

  8/23/1990 - 33 years ago

• Max Amd Letter Date

  8/23/1990 - 33 years ago

• ARRA Amount

• Name

  Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc

• City

  Cambridge

• State

  MA

• Country

  United States

• Address

  555 Technology Square - M/S 07

• Postal Code

  021393563

• Phone Number

  6172582761

• First Name

  Daniel

• Last Name

  Whitney

• Email Address

  dwhitney@mit.edu

• Start Date

  9/1/1990 12:00:00 AM

• First Name

  Steven

• Last Name

  Eppinger

• Start Date

  9/1/1990 12:00:00 AM

• First Name

  Richard

• Last Name

  Wandmacher

• Start Date

  9/1/1990 12:00:00 AM

• Name

  Engineering NEC

• Code

  59

• Name

  Industrial Technology

• Code

  308000