Rationalizing the Design Process

There is a strong sympathy between the literature on organizational design and that for product design, as one would expect. Product design is just one manifestation of the general organizational problem: how to divide up a complex of tasks into well defined subtasks, and then coordinate the divided whole to pursue a focussed objective. This paper outlines the sympathies between these two literatures, and shows how product design techniques such as conjoint analysis, quality function deployment, Taguchi methods, design for assembly, value engineering, failure modes and effects analysis, empirical guidelines, team building, and organizational initiatives address various facets of the general coordination problem.