Making Design Reviews Count
Kurt A. Beiter, Kosuke Ishii, Harshavardhan Karandikar · Volume 4: ASME/IEEE International Conference on Mechatronic and Embedded Systems and Applications and the 19th Reliability, Stress Analysis, and Failure Prevention Conference · 2007
Design reviews are one of the most established product-development project management techniques to identify and eliminate errors in product design before they physically manifest themselves either in a prototype or in the final product. Design reviews are typically embedded within an overall product-development project management process consisting of multiple stages separated by decision gates. The specific goal, structure and content of a design review depend upon the stage and time at which it is performed. In the process of working with a number of large companies on their technology and product development processes we observed that the actual practice of design reviews often falls well short of the companies’ own stated objectives. We examine the reasons for this in our paper, the chief among them being the often misleading application and lack of clarity and brevity in the review process. These problems can be clearly highlighted and rectified by the application of the CVCA and FMEA tools to the design review process itself. Thus, design reviews can be made more efficient and effective and made to count!