CHARACTERIZING THE DYNAMICS OF DESIGN CHANGE

DS 68-1: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 11), Impacting Society through Engineering Design, Vol. 1: Design Processes, Lyngby/Copenhagen, Denmark, 15.-19.08.2011

Year: 2011
Editor: Culley, S.J.; Hicks, B.J.; McAloone, T.C.; Howard, T.J. & Clarkson, P.J.
Author: Siddiqi, Afreen; de Weck, Olivier L.; Robinson, Bob; Keller, Rene
Series: ICED
Section: Design Processes
Page(s): 355-365

Abstract

Engineering design changes play an important role in improving the technical design and ensuring eventual success of the system. Most of the research related to design change has been traditionally focused on studying the management of the change process, prediction of change propagation and dynamics of rework in projects. This study conducts an empirical investigation of engineering design changes, as described through the attributes of change requests volume, costs, and location using a large dataset of an actual multi-year, multi-billion engineering project. A few theoretical generalizations are proposed regarding the dynamics of change volume and costs. The results of the data analysis are used to illustrate how knowledge of meta-change activity and attributes can be used both for informing resource allocation and planning decisions for project management, and improving system design.

Keywords: DESIGN CHANGE; CHANGE VOLUME; CHANGE DYNAMICS; CHANGE COSTS

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