IDENTIFYING CONTROLLING FEATURES OF ENGINEERING DESIGN ITERATION

Engineering design often involves a very complex set of relationships among a large number of coupled problems. It is this complex coupling that leads to iteration among the various engineering tasks in a large project. The design structure matrix (DSM) is useful in identifying w here iteration is necessary. The work transformation matrix model deve loped in this paper is a powerful extension of the DSM method which ca n predict slow and rapid convergence of iteration within a project, an d predict those coupled features of the design problem which will requ ire many iterations to reach a technical solution. This model is appli ed to an automotive brake-system development process in order to illus trate the model's utility in describing the main features of an actual design process.