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ESD Research Domains
ESD Research Approaches
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Understanding how and why changes propagate during
engineering design is critical because most products and systems
emerge from predecessors and not through clean sheet design. This
research develops and applies change propagation analysis methods
and extended prior reasoning through examination of large data
sets from industry. One such data set at Raytheon Integrated Defense
Systems included 41,500 change requests, spanning eight years
during the design of a complex sensor system.
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Propagation network of 2,600 connected changes
in a Sensor
System at Raytheon IDS
Courtesy of Professor
Olivier de Weck
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The research used graph theory to define how specific
network relationships of connected “parent,” “children,”
and “sibling” changes are resolved over time and
mapped to various subsystem areas.
The research also developed a normalized change
propagation index, showing the relative strength of subsystems
or components on the absorber-multiplier spectrum between -1
and +1. Multipliers send out more changes than they receive
and are good candidates for more focused change management and
embedding of flexibility. Patterns emerge from such industrial
data and offer clear implications for technical change management
approaches in system design.
The insights from this research have had an impact
on program and change management at Raytheon, Xerox, and BP
and have led to the formation of a research consortium of 20
industrial firms as sponsored by the Cambridge-MIT Institute.
Giffin M., O . de Weck, G . B ounova, R . K eller,
C . E ckert, and J . C larkson, “Change Propagation Analysis
in C omplex Technical S ystems,” AS ME 2007 Design E ngineering
Technical Conferences, DE TC2007-34652, L as Vegas, N V, S eptember
4–7, 2007 (in press for ASME Journal of Mechanical Design).
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