A network-based assessment of design dependency in product development

When design evolves design changes are inevitable. They affect the design of a product in many aspects and requires much redesign, which is time consuming and costly. This article introduces a network-based approach to assess the design dependency in a quantitative manner such that strategic design decisions could be made to deal with design resources allocation and design activity scheduling, and reduces unnecessary design changes. This approach considers the dependencies of design elements from a global perspective, and calculates and ranks the weights of corresponding design elements in terms of their design interaction behaviour. Different design strategies are recommended accordingly. A case study is conducted to validate the feasibility and robustness of the proposed approach.