A Framework for Design Process Specifications Management

Major conflicts in design process management seem to stem from specification conflicts among the constituent coupled design tasks. Coupled tasks represent conflicts in the flow of information of a design process. Resolving these specification conflicts early on in the development process tends to reduce product development lead times and cost. In this paper, we attempt to explain the coupling or interdependency in design tasks by the specifications imposed on these tasks. Then, we formulate the fundamental equations necessary for engineering specification management and devise a graphical tool for design process improvement. The major hypothesis investigated is that any two coupled tasks can be de-coupled if the specification of one task can be designed to absorb a certain percentage of any possible variation in the output of the other task.