Research and Development Project Selection Tools: Probing Wright Laboratory'sProject Selection Methods and Decision Criteria Using the Lateral Airfoil Concept

摘要

This research accomplished three major tasks. First it examined familiarity andusage rates for fifteen published RD project selection methods in the context of a larger general issue, the Air Force's ability to develop and exploit technology. Wright Laboratory served as the focus for the research effort and displayed a greater tendency to use formal methods in 1993 than was shown in prior research. The laboratory's overall preference for simpler models like Checklist, Scoring, and Sorting led to a recommendation that authors familiar with the other techniques communicate them in engineering and management vernacular. Secondly, the study introduced a technological paradigm, lateral airfoils. The methodology employed one of three new lateral airfoil applications and used it to meet the third initiative. Finally, the study used a placebo lateral airfoil research project to gauge Wright Laboratory's decision making process. The study revealed thirty discrete criteria and successfully reduced these to seven determinant attributes indicative of overall laboratory support for applied research efforts. Research and development, Lateral airfoil(s), Decision models(Methods), Voith-Schnider propeller, Project management, Decision criteria.