A Coordination-theory Approach to Exploring Process Alternatives for Designing Differentiated Products
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4362-02.pdf
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Author(s)
Hayashi, Naoki
Herman, George
Date Issued
February 3, 2003
Series/Report no.
MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper;4362-02
Abstract
This paper describes a new systematic method for exploring and evaluating alternatives
of a product design process for differentiated products - those that share some
elements but also have differentiating features. Based on coordination theory, the
method clarifies the opportunities and risks of process alternatives. The method
consists of three steps: 1) finding applicable differentiation approaches, 2) finding
applicable patterns of process coordination, and 3) evaluating total costs of the
process alternatives.
We categorized the differentiation approaches as a taxonomy of design processes; the
taxonomy includes approaches of adding or removing differentiating elements or
sorting results. We also categorize how these are limited by type of interim resource in
a design process. We outline three patterns of process coordination and how this
interacts with the choice of product differentiation approaches. We show how the
process alternatives vary in the success rate of the coordination and how this
probability affects total cost of executing a design process. It raises an awareness of
the importance of managing dependencies between activities, which many process
analyses don't focus on.
We also show how to calculate the success rate associated with varying the
coordination cost or how to calculate coordination cost associated with a desired
success rate. These calculated values indicate "break-even points" for the cost of the
process
Subjects
Coordination Theory
Product Design
Process Analysis
Persistent DSpace Link
