An overlapping-based design structure matrix for measuring interaction strength and clustering analysis in product development project

To gain competitive leverage, firms that design and develop complex products seek to optimize the organization structure in their new product development (PD) projects. The overlapped process is a fundamental feature of concurrent engineering, which not only reduces project duration but also increases coordination, communication, and interaction between organizational units. In order to reduce complexity of coordination, this paper proposes a design structure matrix (DSM) method for measuring interaction strength and clustering organizational units. This paper analyzes the impact of overlapping on interaction strength between teams performing these overlapped activities. Further, evolution DSM and sensitivity DSM are constructed for representing evolution degree and sensitivity degree. Based on the concepts of overlapping ratio and relative coordination frequency, this paper proposes a quantitative model using the evolution DSM and sensitivity DSM to measure the interaction strength between teams performing overlapped activities. The two-stage clustering criterion model is proposed for clustering numerical DSM, of which the first-stage clustering criterion is the maximization of the added average interaction strength of the selected organizational units and the second-stage clustering criterion is the minimization of the total coordination time of the PD project. An industrial example is provided to illustrate the proposed model. Results indicate that the clustered numerical DSM can reduce coordination time significantly. The model yields and reinforces several managerial insights, including: how to analyze the interaction strength based on overlapping, the impact of interaction strength on clusters and coordination time.