Managing complex product development projects is a massive integration effort at many levels. Product and production plans must be integrated into components, components into subsystems, subsystems into systems and systems into quality products.

The traditional project management does not provide the kind of detail required today to both accelerate product development and improve product quality in the 21st century. Managing Complex Product Development Projects presents a revolutionary design structure matrix (DSM) that MIT researchers use to determine which tasks within each phase of a complex project should or should not be performed concurrently. The DSM method is already applied in a number of corporations.

MIT researchers developed the DSM modeling approach to learn how to solve problems facing large-scale projects. After field-testing DSM in dozens of organizations and industries around the world, they found that it successfully streamlined the development of a wide array of projects including:

• complex automotive components systems and subsystems
• aerospace configuration design
• concept development and program roll-out
• electronics and semi-conductor development
• equipment and machine tool development
• plant engineering
• construction projects

Through lectures, exercises, interactive discussions, and teamwork, participants in the program learn how to use DSM to map complex design procedures into simple arrays. Most important, they learn how to solve four key problems that confound complex product development project management: iteration, overlapping tasks, architecture, decomposition and integration.

In Managing Complex Product Development Projects, participants learn to:

• better document existing procedures
• reduce complexity
• share data with confidence
• facilitate project flow
• expose constraints and conflicts
• design iteration strategically

Managing Complex Product Development Projects is designed for senior managers involved in complex product development and project management as well as those responsible for speeding up the process of improving design procedures and designing and developing better products. These include:

• vice presidents of engineering, manufacturing, and technology
• directors of project management
• product and business development
• engineering and R&D program managers
• chief project engineers
• product design and process development engineers
• technology strategists
• project leaders

Steven D. Eppinger, General Motors LFM Professor of Management Science and Engineering Systems, is co-director of MIT�s Center for Innovation in Product Development and co-director of the Leaders for Manufacturing and System Design and Management masters programs. His research creates new approaches to improve complex product development processes, work that has been applied primarily in the automotive, electronics, aerospace, and equipment industries. Eppinger lectures regularly for international corporations and in executive education programs and has consulted for or conducted research with more than fifty organizations. He has worked as a manufacturing engineer, product designer, and consultant in both prototype and production operations.