Accelerating the development of complex products in extended enterprises

Abstract

This thesis examines strategies to accelerate product development in a large commercial aerospace program structured as an extended enterprise where first and second tier suppliers perform most of the detailed product development. Two of the program's primary objectives are to increase fuel efficiency and to reduce development time. Several structural engineering challenges and unanticipated delays have put these objectives at risk. This thesis examines the hypothesis that the program's product development enterprise is misaligned with the product architecture and that this generates undesired dynamic behaviors in the product development system, especially oscillation in loads on the airframe and in component designs. This work explores the specific causes of observed dynamic behavior in the design process during which suppliers and the OEM fail to come to agreement on important design parameters that affect weight, structural loads, and the resulting internal stresses in the structure. In addition, it suggests alternate strategies for dealing with engineering design changes and presents a simulation game and an agentbased model whereby it tests whether these strategies reduce the dynamically-induced delays.