| Development of large complex systems involves an extensive design integration, team coordination, and engineering management. As the development process advances, parts of the design come together and get integrated and tested with changes being made where necessary to meet an established set of requirements and program goals. These changes or reworks are a part of the development process that can be reduced to some degree with improved design team integration.;In this dissertation, a methodology is developed for improving design integration by analyzing an organization of teams using Design Structure Matrices' (DSM) to reduce the overall quantity of reworks thus reducing total development cost. This methodology provides step-by-step procedures using estimated development parameters (such as expected numbers of reworks, cost of each rework, and others) to determine optimal places between teams to add interdependent integration coupling. A procedure is also presented to select candidate teams for coupling to focus parameter estimation to appropriate areas. A mathematical optimization formulation is given and AMPL models are presented that clearly demonstrate how to apply the integration optimization methodology to design organizations. A thorough algorithm and model verification is presented followed by a validation of the methodology. Improved design integration can be obtained with a reduction of design rework. |
