ACCELERATING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT BY THE EXCHANGE OF PRELIMINARY PRODUCT DESIGN INFORMATION

In this paper, we discuss the problem of reducing product development lead time by overlapping coupled development activities through the ex change of preliminary design information. We present an approach, call ed iterative overlapping, in which downstream development activities b egin with unfinalized upstream design information and accommodate desi gn changes in subsequent iterations. In the absence of careful control , iterative overlapping could involve excessive downstream rework lead ing to an increase in lead time. We formulate the iterative overlappin g problem and model iterations and design changes to determine how to overlap the activities for lend time reduction. The model is illustrat ed with application to an automobile door panel development process.