The Use of Design Structure Matrix and Simulated Annealing to Reduce Product Development Cycle Time

摘要

A product development project fundamentally differs from a construction or a manufacturing project in being information-based and characterized by feedback loops which cause the rework of some tasks. One method that can aid analyzing such projects is to display the processes in a design structure matrix (DSM) format. The primary advantage of the DSM over other project management tools is the ability to group and display the iterative sub-cycles that are commonly found in the design cycle. A large iterative sub-cycle can be very expensive to converge sincet the iterations contained in the feedback loops are nested, which requires numerous executions of potentially expensive processes. Thus, in analyzing or optimizing such a coupled system, it is essential to be able to determine the best ordering of the processes within these iterative sub-cycles to reduce design cycle time and cost. In this research, a simulated annealing algorithm was used to rapidly examine different sequencings of processes within an iterative sub-cycle and select the optimal sequence based on cost, time, and iteration requirements. In order to apply simulated annealing, a mathematical model was proposed and implemented through integrating a mathematical modeling tool (MS Excel), and a programming language (Visual Basic for Applications).