Risk mitigation investment in concurrent design process

Concurrent Engineering has been a proven methodology for developing products and processes especially with a design emphasis, where the design process is often critical to the success or failure of the project. Product specifications, costs, materials, and manufacturing processes are influenced by design. Failure in a design activity generates extra costs in the form of redesigning, reworking, rescheduling and resource reallocation and when extra iterations are encountered. Moreover, the company may also experience loss of opportunities and potential loss of customers. Thus, a continuity of the design process must generally be maintained Success probability of a task indicates the success ratio of an individual design task and depends on behavior of risk factor(s) in a particular task. Risk mitigation and regular monitoring programs implemented in design can improve the success probability of a design process. However, a risk mitigation program may generate additional cost, time, and/or effort. This paper describes a risk management methodology based on IDEF3 system definition to describe the design process. Overall success probability of a design process was calculated based on the IDEF3 model and the system reliability was tested. An investment analysis was carried out to see whether or not it was worth investing in a mitigation and maintenance program. An appropriate decision can be made based on the benefits from the proposed investment program using further simulation as detailed in this paper.