Information Technology Support For The "Fuzzy Front End" Of Product Design

Along with the development of information technique and Internet, the business enterprises need more and more strongly the development of e-commerce and informatinization to raise the competitive advantage. And the new product development is a core. The early concept design stage of the new product development is so important and is called the "Fuzzy Front End" (FFE) process because of its uncertainty. From the research and analysis, it is can say that the FFE process is quite critical in the New Product Development. It is generally accepted that 80% of the costs of a new product are committed in the first 20% of the incurred costs of an overall New Product Development process.This dissertation is created to identify and analysis the IT tools and methods to support the Fuzzy Front End (FFE) process which can be regarded as the prophase of the New Product Development. The theoretical background of this dissertation is the FFE theory, and three methods and tools - Concurrent Engineering (CE), Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) — have been identified to supports this process. When applying CE, KBE and QFD to the different stages of those process models, it is proved that those methods and tools can reduce the uncertainty in the FFE and make the whole NPD process more effectively and efficiently.In Chapter 1, there is a general introduction for the concepts, categories and processes about new product development.In Chapter 2, a stage-gate process to support the new product development is introduced. And Process Models for Fuzzy Front End are based on the stage-gate process.In Chapter 3, a survey for the proficiency of the Fuzzy Front End and the nature of the FFE requirement are illustrated.In Chapter 4, three main kinds of methods and techniques — Concurrent Engineering (CE), Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) — that support the Fuzzy Frond End process in different aspectsare given comprehensive introductions on both applications and benefits of those methods.In Chapter 5, some commercial tools based on those three methods are introduced from their capabilities and applications on the big companies. Although the some technologies has been just concerned in recent 10 years, the commercial tools based on those technologies has been developed fast, and the capabilities covers many aspects supporting the FFE.However, due to the limitation of this dissertation, it cannot cover the full-scale of IT tools that support the FFE. And it just identify the applications and capabilities of the IT tools, the detailed implementation statues and other aspects need to be explored by the further research on the collaboration with a group of manufacturing companies.