Driving Product Development with Critical Parameters

Transcription

1 Driving Product Development with Critical Parameters Cognition delivers Active Requirements Management for the Full Product Lifecycle Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC 2001 West Main Street, Suite 222 Stamford, CT (800) July 2007

2 CPDA: Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC CPDA s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) research programs target the critical decisions in Product Lifecycle Management challenging Design, Engineering, Manufacturing, and Information Technology managers and executives. CPDA s PLM collaborative research programs provide indepth analysis of strategies, products, issues, processes, technologies, trends, case studies, and surveys for assessing technology, business goals and objectives, and implementation road maps. The cohesive suite of collaborative programs clarifies and evaluates new capabilities, standards for frameworks, and development issues; it highlights the most advanced uses of leading technologies, and it links the technical effort to the realization of business value. The four collaborative research programs include: Design Creation and Validation: A bottom-up view of engineering requirements from the desktop across the enterprise. Advanced computer-aided design (CAD), engineering analysis, manufacturing technologies, collaboration, and visualization software serve as springboards for gaining a competitive advantage. The Design Creation and Validation service applies CPDA s structured methodology to the evaluation of new products and processes as well as to current projects in client organizations. A critical focus, the emerging technology of knowledge engineering with templates and rule-based architectures focuses on delivering the needed tools into the hands of product developers to capture knowledge, and to formalize its use. The use of direct geometry access and manipulation, data translation technology, XML alternatives, and JT options are also assessed for their ability to deliver interoperability across the diverse and disparate business and technical applications. Design/Simulation Council: The Council promotes a standard framework employing common terminology to integrate and optimize the diverse and divergent specialist activities currently fragmenting design efforts. CAE must fully integrate with design, up front, to close the chasm between design and analysis. Analysts must actively participate continuously in design decisions and enter the mainstream. The impending breakthrough in CAE will rest on knowledge reuse, process capture, and streamlining. PLM Integration / Product Definition: A top-down view provides a conceptual framework for collaboration across different product development perspectives, bridging customer needs, systems engineering and tradeoffs, design solutions, and fulfillment and manufacturing. Integration and interoperability in complex PLM environments pose substantial hurdles. The rapid transition to cross-enterprise collaboration, at all levels of design and supply, intensifies the pressure on existing, inwardly focused IT architectures to support and enable new modes of doing business. Product Value Management: Common processes for design, development, and product introduction across the supply chain may be validated with reference models such as SCOR (Supply Chain Operational Reference model), or VCOR (Value Chain Operational Reference model). The first step, business process modeling (BPM), facilitates the building of consensus around a common understanding and terminology, across organizations and functional silos. Mapping BPM to a service-oriented architecture based on open standards represents a critical second step. An IT integration infrastructure in a Federated Enterprise Reference Architecture (FERA) supports a loose coupling between enterprises extending across the supply chain. Collaborative Product Development Associates was formed by the PLM research team of D.H. Brown Associates, Inc. (DHBA).

3 Driving Product Development with Critical Parameters Cognition delivers Active Requirements Management for the Full Product Lifecycle EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Michel Vrinat, PLM Research Director Requirements management presents the first step towards good project execution by linking customer needs or market input with product specifications and actual performance targets. However, tracking the critical design parameters with precision, where a mistake compromises or even jeopardizes the entire project, is a challenge in the face of rising complexity. Moreover, keeping critical data current and maintaining visibility for management based on real data presents the goal of Critical Parameters Management, or CPM. A new acronym, CPM will quickly become very familiar to any project manager when they realize how the technology can dramatically improve their focus and control of product development. Cognition embraced the concepts only a few years ago, after providing ideas management and general requirements management solutions adapted to the dynamic cycle that takes place in the early stages of project launch and product definition. Cognition s Active Requirements Management implements CPM to facilitate the product development process in a way similar to what the Internet does for the world at large it provides a constant, real-time connection between people, helping them share knowledge as it becomes available from a variety of sources. The companies we interviewed included Motorola; Raytheon; Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) and a fourth company that prefers to remain anonymous. All were extremely pleased with the product and the approach. As one of them said spontaneously, Any important engineering project should use Cognition s CPM. The different levels of information and parameters to be managed during a development project begin at the highest level with the market requirements, or Voice of Customer in Cognition s jargon. As summarized in the figure below, a limited number of critical parameters are then selected as CTQs, or Critical-to- Quality. Those parameters are then translated into actual targets to be used as Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC A summary of this report is available to all of our subscribers. Sponsors of our collaborative PLM Integration/Product Definition program receive the full report as part of our comprehensive services. Those interested in the program should contact cust_service@cpd-associates.com.

4 inputs for design and simulation for the solution being developed. Finally, all the detailed parameters and data are generated during detailed design phases. From the original customer needs to the very large number of parameters that will directly drive product performance across the full design cycle, there is a need to closely track a limited number of critical parameters. They must be carefully selected and permanently linked with the necessary performance variables, supporting documents, and reports tracked by management executives. FIGURE 1: Cognition Cockpit Overview Manage & Navigate Critical Parameter Flowdown Tree VOCs Top Level CTQs (Y) Inputs (X) DFSS Project Management Launch HoQs Manage & Access Transfer Function Applications Launch Score Cards Manage the Many-to-Many Relationships and Much, Much, More DFSS Document Management But an even more important issue that does not appear on this chart was mentioned by all the companies interviewed. They no longer can afford to rely on a qualitative point of view that the project s critical tasks are on time or not, as represented by red, yellow, or green lights. They must avoid the simplification involved with single point estimates as parameters for time, quality, or cost variables. All four highly appreciate the ability to drive the project and product development from a range of values that define the bracket of acceptable performance. That is a revolutionary approach for managing product development, which closely aligns strategic decision making and mathematical models in the same tool. All four companies rated this capability as a strategic advantage. All have clearly identified the ROI in terms of cycle time reduction, improved quality, and fewer waivers at the end of the product development phase. Overall, Cognition s product provides traditional requirements management functions as a substitute for the traditional text-based requirements management tools. But more, Cognition has introduced a shared, web-based backbone for Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC

5 deeper requirements management by linking critical parameters defined at the conceptual stage for system design with the detailed design parameters that drive geometry definition, as well as other artifacts necessary to fully specify a manufactured product. Or, when necessary, Cockpit can simply be linked to existing requirements management applications with the appropriate connector. This document is copyrighted by Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC (CPDA) and is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and conventions. This document may not be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form, posted on a public or private website or bulletin board, or sublicensed to a third party without the written consent of CPDA. No copyright may be obscured or removed from the paper. Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC and CPDA are trademarks of Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC All trademarks and registered marks of products and companies referred to in this paper are protected. This document was developed on the basis of information and sources believed to be reliable. This document is to be used as is. CPDA makes no guarantees or representations regarding, and shall have no liability for the accuracy of, data, subject matter, quality, or timeliness of the content Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC 3

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...1 INTEGRATING THE VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER ACROSS THE FULL DEVELOPMENT CYCLE...5 BUILDING THE HOUSE OF QUALITY...6 SYSTEM SIMULATION...7 WHAT CUSTOMERS SAY...8 Raytheon...8 Motorola...10 Beckton, Dickson...11 Anonymous User...12

7 Driving Product Development with Critical Parameters Cognition s Active Requirements Management for the Full Product Lifecycle INTEGRATING THE VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER ACROSS THE FULL DEVELOPMENT CYCLE In general, requirements management readily deals with a large amount of text that precisely defines technical requirements and detailed product specifications. But Cognition extends the capability to dynamically manage the handling of the original thought or need that is expressed by the customer or the members of a marketing organization. At this early stage, several industries must track the source of a requirement, its justification, and any discussion that led to its formulation. Later, if a change has to be made and the requirement needs to be re-evaluated, it will be necessary to remember why the requirement was expressed as it was and the context of the discussion and marketing approaches considered. FIGURE 2: VOCs and Requirements Marketing Import from External Resources, or Create with Cockpit via Dialogs SRM 2007 Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC 5

8 BUILDING THE HOUSE OF QUALITY Several of the companies we interviewed clearly position Cognition s solution as the main component of their DFSS (Design for Six Sigma) strategy. One of them calls it SSPD, or Six Sigma for Product Development. 1 The approach establishes and maintains direct references that link all critical parameters to the original requirement on one side, and to the detailed specifications needed for product development on the other side. Critical parameters may be extracted with the references that are directly linked to the requirements flowdown in order to maintain full traceability at each stage of refinement in requirements and specifications over the product development phases and across all disciplines. FIGURE 3 Full House of Quality Capabilities Maintains All Links in the CPM Tree The chart above illustrates how the original customer s requirements (Voice of Customer) are translated and linked to System Requirements that are themselves decomposed into multiple parameters. For each value of the parameters, a weighting can be established to highlight its contribution to the fulfillment of the customer requirements. Maintaining these scorecards and the relationship between parameters, system requirements, and customer requirements, is a key challenge in maintaining and boosting overall quality through the development process. Cognition also supports the definition of the logical schema that has to be created from the requirements to define and support a system that will implement those requirements. Block diagrams can be built with full traceability of the parameters at each level of the flow down, with links defined across related block diagrams. 1 See Design for Six Sigma in Technology and Product Development, Clyde M. Creveling, Jeff Slutsky, Dave Antis, and Jeffrey Lee Slutsky, Person Education Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall, Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC

9 SYSTEM SIMULATION Another strategic advantage of the Cognition approach is that it is not only a textor-attributes management solution, but a complete solution for system simulation, thanks to the integration offered with most of the system simulation solutions on the market such as Excel, Crystal Ball, Minitab, MATLAB and Simulink, as well as Cognition s own set of mathematical formulas (transfer functions). Transfer functions are required for predictive engineering, to calculate nominal output values given a set of inputs, y = f(x1, x2, xn). They also calculate variations of the output and input values to establish their sensitivity. Popular methods for developing transfer functions include explicit engineering equations, experiments covered by DOE and Monte Carlo approaches for both virtual and physical testing, regression analysis of physical testing, black box application software tools, and corporate tribal knowledge accumulated through experience and passed on. There is not yet an out-of-the-box integration defined by Cognition with detailed design simulation tools such as FEA, or a direct interface with a CAD solution. However, two of those contacted targeted the integration as an important step to be achieved, and they believe the technology is available to do so. Cognition offers a series of statistical tools supporting the development of a stochastic approach across an acceptable range of behavior for critical parameters, rather than relying on single-point estimates to evaluate system behavior. FIGURE 4 Develop the Analytical Tree Flow Down Requirements to Develop the Structural Tree Transfer Functions Relate the CPs that Define the Analytical Tree Design Intent Prediction Performance Process Capability Prediction Producibility In the figure above, critical parameters are translated into actual design and simulation variables using transfer functions. The performance of the solution 2007 Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC 7

10 being developed is measured continuously. The structural tree on the left, describing requirements and specifications flow down, is defined and refined in parallel with the analytical tree that describes and verifies behavior. The Cognition solution integrates external simulation tools using data export and import functions, mainly through Excel, MATLAB, and Simulink. A scorecard of the simulation results with the range of values for each parameter can be built and displayed to visualize the system s behavior and performance. WHAT CUSTOMERS SAY The companies we interviewed included Raytheon; Motorola; Becton, Dickinson; and a fourth company that prefers to remain anonymous. All were extremely pleased with the product and the approach. As one of them said spontaneously, Any important engineering project should use Cognition s CPM. Those companies, such as these, adopting new technologies earlier than others will have a competitive advantage and should capitalize on it. Laggards will likely wait for it to be mainstream and unavoidable. RAYTHEON Andrew Shih at Raytheon is in charge of tracking down the technical parameters that are critical to a radar design. As part of the system engineering team, he leads the deployment of Cognition s solution. The most important challenge is the solidification of the customer s requirement into a set of final product specifications. Product requirements evolve on a day-to-day basis and are difficult to stabilize during the early design phase, especially when the changes are distributed across everyone s desktop or notebook. Cognition s Cockpit solution now tracks what has been changed, why and by whom. Users access the application from a web portal and enter changes directly to the system s parameters. The full data model is maintained on a server together with the product structure with the requirements and parameters attached. Raytheon also uses Telelogic s DOORS solution as a repository for Customer requirement documentation. With specific customization, Cockpit can import specific information from DOORS. Cockpit can also integrate with MATLAB files. Currently, five product lines have been using Cockpit to help track technical parameters. From Andrew s point of view, the strengths of the Cognition solution are: Collaboration capabilities to replace and augment and eroom type activities. Analytical capabilities lay out the statistical range of acceptable behavior for a design and support the study of tradeoffs based on cost and performance, which leads to better decision making. Data management check-in and check-out Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC

11 Response time very good with flexibility for the management of fifty critical parameters with six levels of depth and one hundred related documents. Ease of use the web portal dramatically simplifies the user environment. Andrew also mentioned several areas of development that will significantly strengthen the approach: Additional efforts on the early product development phase would be valuable, continuing the major improvements of the Cockpit already seen over the last two years. Need for more features. Cockpit would benefit from a direct link with Cognition s cost analysis module that Raytheon is also using. R. Jon Wheeler, Senior Principal Systems Engineer at Raytheon, on a team in charge of similar efforts for the Radar division, also joined the discussion. Jon monitors the technical parameters of the radar system during the design and build processes, and reports status to customers. The project with Cognition started two years ago as part of a DFSS initiative. Raytheon did a market review of different solutions, including DOORS, and studied in-house development options based on an Access database or Excel spreadsheets. A major factor favoring Cognition related to its ability to track the distribution of a parameter s value stochastically. Some of the development necessary derived from a series of wrappers for an easy-to-use user interface for everyone, and the integration of simulation tools such as MATLAB, Simulink, Excel, and other tracking tools such as DOORS. Currently, the plan extends further to the integration of FEA and aerodynamics simulation tools. Raytheon employs the Monte Carlo simulation and DOE (Design of Experiment) capabilities of Cognition s Cockpit to drill down to low level parameters and complete the simulation at that level. All specifications documents are currently managed within DOORS, but Jon rates Cognition s potential capabilities in data management as robust enough to migrate that activity to Cognition s tool. Raytheon s Radar division is using Cognition for five projects in parallel, with an average of 900 parameters in each. With roughly 600 users today, a few experts build the models while a large number of users assign values to the parameters. From Jon s point of view, the strengths and benefits of the Cognition solution include the following: Whole system parameter rollup and tracking, including intuitive, instant access to dependencies, related requirements, and low level design documentation. Modular reuse of existing parameter trees on technically similar programs. Streamline the process for managing technical parameters and reduce overhead the support staff required fell from four to one part-time individual Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC 9

12 Reduce overall technical parameters process time. Present accurate values to management Raytheon is using the Cpk index (process capability index), which reflects process capability in statistical process control, to represent the relative variance allowed on a requirement. The approach replaces the use of point estimates that might be near the edge of the permissible range. Then, any manufacturing or process variances could readily shift the result from green to red. Major but un-quantifiable benefits in terms of improved communication and risk mitigation. Jon also sees the following opportunities in the future for enhancement: Eventually, system design will be closely coupled with project bidding, where customer can be shown instantly the relationship between cost and various performance criteria (db for dollars). While impressive development has been accomplished over the last two years, which reassures Jon on the future path, Cockpit is a relatively young product and will benefit from stabilization. Cost can be an issue for a small project as the licensing at over $60K effectively targets the corporate level. ROI is difficult to show because of the distribution of the benefits over different teams and departments. Management is sometimes not familiar with a stochastic approach and may not fully understand and appreciate the need. MOTOROLA Tom Judd, previously a DFSS leader of the Cognition team, firmly believes in the value of Cognition s approach. He benefits from extensive experience with the product at Motorola, Raytheon, Boston Scientific, and several others where he consulted to assist in DFSS initiatives before assuming his current position as Senior Director, Product Development Quality, in the Motorola Corporate Quality Office. Cognition provides one of the corporate tools at Motorola to support their DFSS implementation strategy. Motorola s approach is to start DFSS in the marketing stage to ensure a robust collection of customer requirements resulting in a prioritized set of critical needs to define the discriminators for customer satisfaction. These select customer requirements are then directly related to corresponding product requirements to ensure that the product will deliver customer satisfaction. Motorola s objective is to identify the select critical product requirements that have to be managed and monitored to ensure risk mitigation. Risk analysis at this stage is crucial as it identifies the most difficult features in a project early on in terms of technology, performance, planning, production, or robustness. From this initial set of critical product requirements, Motorola applies Critical Parameter Management (CPM), which decomposes these requirements to the Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC

13 lowest level of detail necessary to adequately define the behavior of the top critical requirements. Thus, by definition, those contributing requirements at the subordinate subsystem, module, or component levels are also defined as critical. Undoubtedly, there will be some subordinate requirements that will affect more than one of the top critical requirements because of interactions. This complex hierarchy of nested critical requirements requires a tool like Cognition s to capture and manage. For example, a CPM decomposition tree of only fifteen to twenty top-level critical requirements could easily end up with hundreds of contributing subordinate requirements and involve several interactions. Motorola can now apply predictive engineering by integrating simulation modeling techniques with the CPM decomposition tree using the Cognition tool. Simulation resources include such things as textbook equations, DOE, regression analysis, and MATLAB. Direct simulation with resources such as FEA and thermal analysis is not yet achievable; the DOE technique applied to these simulation resources often results in an equation. A big goal of DFSS is to predict not just the nominal, but the variational limits as well. Once the simulation resources are integrated into the CPM tree using the Cognition tool, this can be accomplished using either root sum squared or Monte Carlo methods. Currently at Motorola, around forty engineers develop the CPM models using the Cognition tool, while many more engineers maintain their parameters independently, coordinating their efforts using Cognition s web access capability. The Critical Parameter Management (CPM) approach is deployed for mechanical, electronics, and software disciplines. It supports a systems engineering view of the top critical requirements for product development, with the ultimate tie to the crucial customer satisfiers. BECKTON, DICKINSON AND COMPANY Tim Sullivan, now R&D manager, was running the systems engineering group for the Baltimore location of the Diagnostics Systems unit within BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), when he selected the Cognition Cockpit solution to drive requirements management aggressively into the product development process. This was part of a broader R&D initiative to improve schedule predictability and resource allocation by embracing Design for Six Sigma. The industry was shifting its focus from the quality of diagnostic results, considered a given, to more efficient and easier work flow for the customer. BD s new product development efforts for diagnostics typically take twelve to thirty-six months with a team of five to fifty engineers, depending on the complexity of the product and the phase within the project. The solution typically includes hardware, software, and consumable products. Using traditional requirements management tools such as Requisite Pro did not provide a satisfactory solution. It was not broadly used outside of the few software experts that were already deeply trained at using the tool and did not satisfy the needs for quantification of the hardware developers. Tim wanted to get a single tool that would capture the voice of the customer, extract the critical parameters, and drive the requirements all the way through to design and validation Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC 11

14 After some discussion and homework on both sides, Cognition provided generic, easy to import survey templates that BD customized to directly capture customer needs. Survey results were tracked as they evolved into product requirements, and then specifications with links, to reconcile test procedures and results. All of the detail that engineering needed was maintained along with the documentation to support design decisions, the evolution of a requirement, or overall traceability for audits. BD has built its House of Quality using Cognition s Cockpit for three projects, and a company-wide deployment is in discussion. From Tim s perspective the strength of the Cognition solution derives from the following: Common database for Voice of Customer, product requirements, technical specifications, test definition, and protocol for validation. No more lost information, with easy access to current project data, which greatly reduces re-work and facilitates the ramp up for new people joining a project. Support for remote participants to the project (replicated database). Full traceability across the full set of data for audit process support (FDA compliant). Flexibility in the definition of objects to fit with the company s needs for the data model and work flow. Ease of use for the end user. Tim summarizes it by calling the product a facilitation tool to support the development process. He also expects more functions to be available with web access from Cognition s Cockpit, as this is the primary mode used within BD, and not all functions are yet available. Tim qualifies the support provided by Cognition as excellent, and did not think of any significant problem using the product. ANONYMOUS USER Another company we contacted was also a fan of Cognition, although they preferred to remain anonymous. This user confirmed all points mentioned above by users, plus a number of additional benefits. He emphasizes also the good service they receive from Cognition and their plans to extend the usage Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC