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Avoiding rework
Avoiding rework in product in product design
design: evidence from
the aerospace industry
5
Isabelle Dostaler
John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Montréal, Canada Received August 2008
Revised April 2009
Accepted May 2009
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study commissioned by an aircraft
producer that is concerned about the efficiency of its new product development process and the high
number of engineering changes generated during aerospace programs.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper focuses on nine structural design projects and
explores the factors explaining the inter-project differences in the number of engineering changes
required after the structural drawings are released to the methods department. The method of inquiry
used in this paper combines questionnaire-based measurement of design performance with in-depth
semi-structured interviews of managers and designers.
Findings – The research results suggest that, in an industrial context where both time pressure and
labour shortage are considerable, design practices such as functional diversity, intense communication,
collocation and strong project leadership, are associated with higher design performance. Furthermore,
in a specific organizational context where the design work is divided among various companies located
in different regions, effective partner integration is another key success factor.
Research limitations/implications – Although the strength of the findings is inevitably limited
by the small number of observations, the results raise some important questions about the effect of
time pressure and labour shortage on product development performance.
Practical implications – The results suggest that design performance is likely to increase if the
production sustaining phase is actively promoted within aerospace companies, since this activity
provides designers with considerable learning opportunities.
Originality/value – Using sensitive internal data on engineering changes and rich qualitative
material, this paper indicates how design performance can be improved in organizations that tend to
rely on design rework and other safety nets to achieve their quality objectives and comply with
industry regulations.
Keywords New products, Product development, Product design, Aerospace industry
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Aircraft design and development are a complex and highly regulated activity.
Given that faulty aircraft design could cause fatal casualties, new aerospace vehicles
must go through a rigorous and detailed certification process. Considerable efforts are
therefore needed to produce defect-free aircrafts that can safely bring passengers from
origin to destination. Aircraft manufacturing companies are not the most efficient
organizations and tend to rely on a number of safety nets and non-value added International Journal of Quality &
activities to achieve their product quality objectives. The amount of redesign can be Reliability Management
Vol. 27 No. 1, 2010
very large and it often takes the assembly of several aircrafts before the product pp. 5-26
definition is stabilised (Adler, 1995). The well-documented story of the development of q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0265-671X
the Boeing 777 aircraft (Brown et al., 2002; Cohen, 2003; Sabbagh, 1995) illustrates this. DOI 10.1108/02656711011009281
IJQRM Although the 777 achieved commercial success and is popular with travellers
27,1 (Cohen, 2003) its development did not go very smoothly, with more design changes
than expected and considerable development costs.
Adding to the design and development complexity, a number of structural changes
have taken place along the global aerospace supply chain in recent years.
A risk-sharing approach in which the overall development and assembly of an
6 aircraft is divided among different companies is now common in the global aerospace
industry: the responsibility for the detailed design work and manufacturing of major
subassemblies of the airplane is attributed to first-tier suppliers, while original
equipment manufacturers (OEMs), such as Boeing, Airbus and Bombardier act as
“system integrators” (Cohen, 2003; Ferreri, 2003; Pritchard and MacPherson, 2007)
responsible for the integration of the complete aircraft. Having several companies
involved in aerospace programs (an aerospace “program” refers to the design and
development of a complete aircraft) increases the complexity of the product
development process and multiplies the opportunities for inefficiencies.
This paper reports on the findings of a study commissioned by an aircraft producer
that wanted its new product development (NPD) performance to be objectively assessed.
This organization was particularly concerned about the high number of engineering
changes generated during aerospace programs and was looking to improve the
efficiency of its NPD process. The aim of the study reported here was to:
. identify the NPD practices that contributed to a smaller number of design
changes; and
.
understand how the characteristics of the industrial and organizational context
had an impact on the performance of the design process.

While a large part of NPD research has concentrated on the automotive and computer
industries (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995; Segismundo and Cauchick Miguel, 2008),
there have only been a few authors who have looked at the aerospace industry (Adler,
1995; Blackburn, 1992; Nellore et al., 1999). Fruin (1998) has suggested that industry
sector is an important mediating factor in the organization of NPD, implying that there
is a need for the study of sectors other than the auto industry. As a matter of fact,
several special features of aircraft design, including its enormous complexity, long
development lead times and the growing number of companies involved in aerospace
programs could very well reduce the efficiency of NPD practices. Hence, identifying the
factors that lead to a smaller number of design changes in the aerospace context
appears to be a worthwhile research objective as it could help aerospace companies to
save on the time and efforts needed to develop defect-free aerospace vehicles that
comply with industry regulations.

2. Research framework
NPD performance is a multidimensional concept, which includes the performance of
the development process itself, the performance of the product and financial
performance. The latter is considered an outcome of both process and product
performance (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995). Whereas, external quality is a key
indicator of the performance of the product developed, the internal failure rate is
regarded as a particularly appropriate measure of the performance of the development
process. Indeed, it has been estimated that as much as 85 per cent of manufacturing
problems have their genesis in poor initial design (Schonberger, 1982). A consistent Avoiding rework
NPD process should result in fewer manufacturing problems and, thus, in fewer in product design
requests for engineering changes. Engineering change orders contribute to increased
product development costs (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991), mainly because of the presence
of couplings that result in a “snowball effect” (Terwiesch and Loch, 1997). Although a
proportion of engineering change orders should be considered necessary, and despite
the desirability of freezing design as late as possible in some industrial settings, there 7
undoubtedly exists a certain percentage of change orders that arise because of
mistakes or lack of communication. For instance, a designer might have chosen an
incorrect component, a drawing might not be specific enough for the methods people,
or the design might not conform to the initial requirements.
How to reduce the number of undesirable engineering changes in order to improve
the efficiency of the NPD process? A theoretical answer to this question is provided in
Figure 1, which shows the conceptual framework used for this research. In keeping
with past NPD research efforts (Song and Montoya-Weiss, 2001), the proposed
framework draws in part from Brown and Eisenhardt’s (1995) integrative model of
product development. While a large number of practices that are believed to have a
positive influence on the various aspects of NPD performance can be found in the
literature, the proposed model focuses on practices that could potentially contribute to
reduce the number of undesirable engineering changes such as:
.
The addition of manufacturing personnel to the development team. Authors have
argued that a poor interface between manufacturing and R&D can be very
detrimental to the NPD process (Adler, 1995; Srinivasan et al., 1997; Ettlie, 1995;
Jassawalla and Sashittal, 1999; Song and Xie, 2000; Swink, 1999). When relevant
information flows from the shop floor to the design teams while technical drawings
are being produced, designers are in a position to make design choices that will
facilitate the assembly process. A lower level of design rework can therefore be
achieved by putting together cross-functional teams (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995)
that would include engineering, methods and manufacturing personnel.
. Collocation. Further integration between design and manufacturing can be
achieved through collocation (McDonough et al., 2001; Patti and Gilbert, 1997;
van den Bulte and Moenaert, 1998), which means that the members of the NPD
teams are removed from their functional department for the duration of the
project, and work side-by-side with the engineering, methods and manufacturing
personnel that are assigned to the NPD team, under the authority of the product
manager. Cross-functional integration and collocation were implemented by

• Cross-functional integration
• Collocation
• Gatekeepers
• Team tenure Number of design
• Communication changes
• Project planning and control
• Strong project leadership
• Senior management support Figure 1.
Research framework
Industrial and organizational context
IJQRM Boeing during its development of the Boeing 777 aircraft (Brown et al., 2002) and
27,1 contributed to significantly reducing the number of engineering changes.
Collocation favours continuous problem solving. Designers can have instant
responses to any questions that may arise, and this can greatly enhance the level
of design quality.
.
Gatekeepers. New product management authors define gatekeepers as
8 individuals who facilitate external communication during a development
project, by bringing outside information into the organization (Allen, 1971; Ettlie
and Elsenbach, 2007; Katz and Tushman, 1981; Nochur and Allen, 1992). Because
they are connected to the outside world and aware of the latest technological
developments in their field, gatekeepers can bring new product ideas into the
organization. Their expertise and capabilities allow them to play a key
problem-solving role and assist in the creation of a design environment in which
a smaller number of mistakes could be made. It can therefore be argued that the
presence of gatekeepers can be associated with a lower level of design rework.
.
Team tenure. The organization of development teams within the NPD process
has received extensive attention (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992, 1995).
Specifically, relatively autonomous teams have been advocated as the route to
effective NPD. Furthermore, team members working as a group for a long period
of time develop efficient ways of working together, which could favour
knowledge retention and facilitate error reduction. While a regular inflow of new
players brings in fresh ideas that can be very advantageous to the NPD project,
employee turnover may result in the loss of tacit knowledge embedded in people
and therefore difficult to formalise and communicate (Nonaka and Takeuchi,
1995). Hence, longer team tenure carries benefits in terms of the capture and
retention of tacit knowledge and may be associated with higher design quality.
.
Good communication. The benefits of good communication on the NPD process
are almost without question. Some of the practices described above, such as the
addition of manufacturing personnel to the development team and collocation, go
far in improving communication between different types of functional expertise.
Quality of communication is, in fact, one of the aspects that varies with the four
types of NPD teams empirically observed by Wheelwright and Clark (1992).
While communication and coordination tend to suffer in traditional functional
teams, they are deeply improved in heavyweight and autonomous teams in
which various functions and disciplines are collocated.
. Project planning and control. Rigorous project planning and control entail a clear
definition of the nature and scope of the work to be done, proper resource
allocation and efficient monitoring of the work progress (Munns and Bjeirmi,
1996). These activities support schedule adherence, but the controlled
environment that they help to create is likely to warrant a lower amount of
design rework. However, schedule adherence and design quality cannot always
be simultaneously achieved, and post-launch problems have been reported in
cases where shorter development lead times were traded off against quality
(Oliver et al., 2004).
.
Project leadership. Also, contributing to create a design environment in which a
smaller number of mistakes can be made, is the presence of a strong project
 leader (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992) who sends clear messages about the value Avoiding rework
of design quality. Through their frequent interaction with team members, project in product design
leaders can shape the team’s behaviour (McDonough, 2000) and ensure that team
members will achieve the quality objectives destined for the design project.
.
Senior management support. The NPD literature has highlighted the role of the
new product champion (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991; Crawford, 1992; Jassawalla and
Sashittal, 2000; Markham and Griffin, 1998), someone who has sufficient authority 9
to fight for a project within the organization. Although the literature does
recognise the risks associated with championing (Schilling, 2005), for example
when a senior manager with access to resources supports a project that is unlikely
to be successful, senior managers can nonetheless play a positive strategic role.
Even if their involvement with the design project is much less extensive than that
of the project leader, senior managers who believe in a project and are ready to
support it can inspire designers to do things well. This may further result in
establishing an organizational environment where design quality is valued.

The dotted lines in Figure 1 shows the porous barrier between product development
projects and their context and suggests that product development projects should not
be comprehended as separate episodes divorced from their industrial and
organizational circumstances. Product development projects are shaped by, and in
turn shape, the specific context in which they are conducted. Therefore, this study has
aimed at identifying not only the NPD practices that lead to a lower number of design
changes, but also at understanding how the characteristics of the industrial and
organizational context in which aerospace design projects are conducted, impact the
number of design changes. In keeping with social scientists who point out that context
is “irreducibly central to understanding human action” (Flyvbjerg, 2001, p. 4), the
research framework allows for the consideration of specific contextual elements that
might cause some practices to be particularly relevant or to mitigate the impact of
practices otherwise known to be effective. The industrial and organizational contextual
elements can be seen as the NPD projects’ “backcloth”, a label judiciously used by
Pettigrew and Whipp (1991), in reference to the national economy in their multi-level
analysis of strategic change in a number of industries.
It should be noted that whereas the research framework is based on an a priori
hypothesis around which NPD best practices will allow an aerospace firm to avoid
design rework, the question of the effects of the industrial and organizational context
on rework is addressed in a much more inductive manner. In other words, the
characteristics of an organizational and industrial context that fosters a reduced
number of design changes remain to be empirically discovered and specified. However,
in keeping with many authors who have suggested that NPD is essentially a
knowledge-creation and integration activity (Antoni et al., 2005; Becker and Zirpoli,
2003; Grant, 1996; Madhavan and Grover, 1998), it can be suspected that the industrial
and organizational context which promotes the creation and retention of knowledge
will also be among those where design projects are conducted successfully.

3. Methodology
This research was conducted in three different design and production sites of a host
company (and/or of its suppliers) in the aerospace industry and focused on nine
IJQRM individual design projects. Details of the aircraft models, the precise dates and
27,1 scheduling of development, and the name and location of participating sites have been
omitted to ensure anonymity. Following from the conceptual framework, archival data
and interviews were used to evaluate the amount of rework in each design project, and
to identify inter-project differences in terms of the NPD practices used and the context
in which the projects were conducted. Comparability being a key issue, the choice of
10 the design projects to be studied was a critical step in ensuring the quality and validity
of the research results. In order to keep size and scope at a manageable level, the study
was based on a specific phase of the NPD cycle, namely the production of the
engineering drawings that support the manufacturing operations. As it lies at the
interface between engineering and production, this phase of the design process was an
appropriate one to investigate whether practices such as cross-functional integration,
collocation and good communication were utilised, as well as to measure the impact of
the use of such practices on the number of design changes. To further ensure
comparability, the study zeroed in on a specific engineering function, namely the design
of the aircraft structure, which is a crucial characteristic of aerospace engineering. In
addition, structural design offered an adequate level of complexity and was an easy
activity to target among the various design and productions sites studied.
The structural components studied had to offer good inter-project comparability.
Similarly, they needed to be components for which no more than an acceptable amount
of design rework would have to be generated, under normal circumstances.
For example, aircraft doors were ruled out, as their structural design is particularly
difficult and often leads to a high number of engineering changes. Moreover, the
structural design projects targeted were clean sheet designs or major redesigns of
existing components so that the design effort required was substantial enough to
render investigating worthwhile. These criteria, established in collaboration with the
host company, led to the choice of nine completed structural design projects, namely
three ailerons, three bulkheads, one saddle tank, one vertical stabilizer and one
horizontal stabilizer project.
Two methods were used for data collection. The host company was actively
involved in the first phase of the study. After the nine structural design projects were
selected in collaboration with the host company, the participating design and
production sites completed a questionnaire developed to track down the number of
post-release engineering changes generated by each structural design project.
Respondents were asked to isolate all the detailed drawings prepared for each of the
studied components (aileron, bulkhead, stabilizer, etc.) and to track down the number
of times each drawing had been changed after it had been delivered to the methods
department for bill of operations preparation. To this end, respondents were asked to
perform a careful review of the various change records that could be found in the
company, such as drawing revisions, engineering orders, requests for change and
others. The total number of changes in structural drawings were then categorised
according to the cause of the redesign. The intention of this analysis was to extract
and isolate only those changes that were directly related to problems and errors in
structural design, and to exclude changes that resulted from processes related to other
functions, such as core engineering, manufacturing or purchasing. This procedure
ensured rigorous measurement of the amount of design rework generated by each
project. It should be noted that it would not have been possible to collect such sensitive Avoiding rework
quantitative data if the study would have not be commissioned by the host company. in product design
In parallel, with the quantitative data collection, field interviews were conducted with
various members of the nine structural design teams to identify the design practices and
contextual factors that may have been associated with a lower number of design changes.
Six engineering managers, 16 lead designers, 14 designers and two Six Sigma master
agents were interviewed, with each interview lasting between 60 and 90 minutes. All of the 11
interviews were conducted by the same two researchers. While some parts of
the interviews were structured and aimed at finding out whether the practices identified in
the literature as supportive of NPD process performance had been used during the
projects, other parts of the interviews were much less structured and thus permitted the
capture of information on emergent themes (Eisenhardt, 1989), in order to better
understand the characteristics of the context in which the projects were conducted.
A factory tour was carried out at each site to question operators about the
manufacturability and general ease of assembly of typical structural components. This
was an opportunity to further assess the performance of the product development process.
All the interviews were taped and transcribed and field notes from the factory tours
were taken in written form. The transcription of the field notes and the interviews
facilitated the subsequent processing and analysis of data. The data were analysed by
systematically segmenting and classifying it, according to different NPD practices that
formed the conceptual framework, but also according to themes that emerged from the
data in relation to the industrial and organizational context in which the studied projects
were carried out (Martin and Turner, 1986; Strauss and Corbin, 1990). In an effort to
favour a homogeneous analysis, the segmentation and classification of the data were
performed by the same two researchers who had conducted the interviews. Databases
were constructed for each design project, itemizing the examples or illustrations for each
component of the conceptual framework and the themes that emerged during the
analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1984; Yin, 1984). The reiterative process of grouping
field data and comparing it with the research framework facilitates the emergence of
interpretations that are both rooted in reality and linked to theory. This inductive
approach was used to understand the background of each project, to measure to what
extent and how successfully product development practices included in the research
framework were utilised, and to explore the contextual elements that may have shaped
the nine structural design projects. Workshops were conducted at the end of the study in
each participating site to present, discuss and validate the research results.

4. Results
Table I presents the ranking of the nine projects for the number of engineering
changes/100 new parts. This measure was derived by dividing the total number of
changes attributed to structural design issues (leaving out changes caused by processes
involving other types of issues such as manufacturing, purchasing and core
engineering) by the number of new unique parts contained in the aircraft component.
The rationale behind this measure is that it simultaneously controls component
complexity (gauged by the number of unique parts in a unit) and product novelty
(gauged by the proportion of parts that were new for this structural aircraft component).
The cases of the two projects (conducted by two different sites) are presented next,
starting with the project that has generated the highest number of engineering changes
IJQRM
Structural design projects Changes/100 new parts Ranking
27,1
Horizontal stabilizer 1.79 1
Saddle tank 17.88 2
Forward pressure bulkhead 22.58 3
Aileron A 25.16 4
12 Aileron B 38.51 5
Vertical stabilizer 39.55 6
Aileron C 49.62 7
Aft pressure bulkhead 80.00 8
Table I. Cockpit pressure bulkhead 269.23 9
Number of changes/100
new parts Note: Average ¼ 60.48

(making it the worst case), followed by the project that has generated the lowest
number of changes (making it the best case). In keeping with the risk-sharing
approach, the overall development of the aircrafts, for which these two components
were designed, was divided between different design and production sites while
the host company (the system integrator) was responsible for the integration of the
complete aircraft.

4.1 Lowest performance project: the cockpit pressure bulkhead

With 269.23 changes/100 new parts, the Pressure Bulkhead Project came in ninth (9th)
position, which was the worst performance of the sample. As the second worst project
had only 80 changes, the Pressure Bulkhead Project can be considered to have been an
extreme case. Furthermore, with only 13 unique parts, this project was the least
complex, whereas the number of changes was only slightly above average at 35.
The quantitative measurement was carried out to evaluate the performance of the
design process and focused only on the cockpit pressure bulkhead. However, the
semi-structured interviews singled out more general aspects and respondents would
often refer to the whole Cockpit Project for which their site was responsible.
4.1.1 Time pressure. Why was there such a large amount of design rework during
the Cockpit Pressure Bulkhead Project? The project manager, one of the team leaders
and two designers insisted on the heaviness of the time pressure experienced during
this project. The airframe integrator was already behind its main competitor, who was
about to introduce a similar product. Time pressure was therefore felt right from the
beginning: “We were late when we started”, as one of the designers interviewed stated.
The design team had to work under pressure in order to catch up:
The schedule was so tight, it was a new design software, a new aircraft, there was not much
time for meetings. There are cases where meetings would have been useful to prevent
problems from happening.
4.1.2 Digital design. The design of the cockpit coincided with the introduction of
computer aided three-dimensional interactive application (CATIA), a digital design
system which few employees had previously used. Although CATIA had many
advantages, such as the early identification of structural incompatibilities visible on the
three-dimensional drawings appearing on computer screens (Brown et al., 2002; Cohen,
2003), its implementation during the Cockpit Project was somewhat problematic.
The platform on which the software was running could barely support it and there were Avoiding rework
limited numbers of workstations. The project manager implemented day and night in product design
shifts, an initiative that allowed for time saving, but resulted in poor communication
with other functions, such as methods and systems engineering. A designer reported on
the situation saying: “The night team did not have any contact with the day team. [Being
at work only at night], the former were not able to communicate with the systems
people.” One of the consequences was that structural designers had to redraw some parts 13
of the component because they were given the wrong system dimensions.
4.1.3 Systems, structure and methods. All the structural designers interviewed
during this research commented on the problem of systems and structure integration
that is inherent to aircraft design. In fact, one of them thought that almost 90 per cent of
structural changes were made to “suit systems”. Efforts to integrate systems and
structure were not sufficient during the Cockpit Pressure Bulkhead Project. Asked
whether he had been in contact with system people during the project, one designer
said that he had not but that there were “certainly” some people in his group dealing
closely with them. This respondent could hardly say whether collocation was used
during this project. Similar miscommunication occurred between structure and
methods, as reported by another respondent:
Methods people were located in the same area as us. In spite of that, the link with them was
not very strong. That led to a lot of changes. Now we know how essential it is to work closely
with other departments.
4.1.4 Labour turnover and knowledge retention. Being under intense time pressure, the
company had to hire a significant number of contractors during this design project.
The project manager even complained about the heterogeneous nature of the team he
had to lead: “There were lots of people from different backgrounds on this project.
They all had their strengths and weaknesses and we had to deal with them.”
Furthermore, labour shortage and turnover appeared to have been quite acute at the
end of the Cockpit Project, when many designers were lost to a competitor. A designer
who had left the company at that time and came back afterwards, explained that just
before leaving, he passed on to a colleague a list of things to do in order to complete a
given task. He mentioned how it was difficult to verbalise everything that should be
said for the job to be completed properly:
It probably shouldn’t be like that, but there are a number of things that you don’t take the
time to write down. Because you know that once you’re there, you’re going to remember.
But the problem is getting there.
This illustrates the negative impact of labour turnover on knowledge retention.
4.1.5 The sustaining phase as a learning opportunity. Two designers and one team
leader who participated in the project mentioned that being involved in the
“sustaining” phase (i.e. supporting the manufacturing function when the assembly of
the aircraft begins) provides an abundance of learning opportunities. One designer
mentioned:
I was involved with the sustaining phase of the Cockpit Project and I learned a lot from
mistakes that other people made. When I design today, I try to remember the problems that
I had corrected to avoid repeating them. This experience is extremely helpful.
IJQRM However, this view of the sustaining phase was far from universal across the research
27,1 sample, as four respondents clearly stated that they found the sustaining phase rather
boring, in comparison to the high pressure experienced during the design phase:
Once you’ve had a taste of this high pressure, it’s hard to live without it. Overnight, you can
go from being very high to very low. It’s very cyclical in nature.

14 4.1.6 Lessons-learned exercises. During one of the interviews conducted at the

beginning of the study, a respondent mentioned the “lessons-learned exercises” carried
out when projects had ended. This emerging theme was added to the interview
schedule. The manager of the Cockpit Project mentioned the “designer’s handbook” as
a legacy of this project. This handbook summarised the company’s design policies and
in an effort to put all the information together, there were meetings involving various
engineering disciplines and functions. However, one designer did not speak very
highly of this book:
The designer’s handbook contains only the broad outlines. It’s especially useful in ensuring
design conformities. But it will not teach somebody the notion of design. If you follow the
handbook, you can actually design a component that will not be manufacturable. It does take
a bit more experience than that.
4.1.7 Managing the linkages. During the field interviews, the involvement of methods
and manufacturing in the structural design process was discussed at length.
Component installation problems can be prevented if designers are familiar with
assembly methods. The following comment indicates that in the years that followed
the Cockpit Project, some improvements had been achieved in the way in which the
interface between design and manufacturing is managed:
At the time of this project, meetings were not held on a regular basis, but now there are
meetings every week and sometimes several meetings each week. Communication with
methods is really excellent. It really is team work.
Indeed, the host company (the system integrator) had implemented a formal product
development process comprising a definite number of phases, each with its own
milestones. Company documents clearly stated that this formal process, which was not
yet in place at the time of the Cockpit Project, was implemented to enhance the quality
of the interface and communication between functions, to reduce time to market and to
minimise engineering changes following the design freeze.

4.2 Highest performance project: the horizontal stabilizer

With an exceptionally low number of changes (1.79/100 new parts), the Horizontal
Stabilizer Project represented the top performance in the research sample. Just as the worst
project was the least complex in the sample (13 unique parts), the Horizontal Stabilizer was
the most complex project, with 840 unique parts. The component made extensive use of
composite materials and accounted for a large and complicated piece of the aircraft.
For some of the design team members (one engineering manager and four lead designers)
who participated in the Horizontal Stabilizer Project, there seems to have been a real sense
of pride attached to it. This design project seemed to have progressed very smoothly, and
the only problem that was reported was that systems came into play rather late in the
process: “They did not get involved until quite a while later, once we had drawn up all the
details. They probably should have been involved a lot earlier.”
 4.2.1 Time pressure. Why did the Horizontal Stabilizer Project generate such a low Avoiding rework
amount of design rework? Of the five interviewees who remembered this project as in product design
highly successful, four mentioned that they had more time to do their work than during
the other design projects with which they were involved afterwards. This extra
time seemed to have been a key factor in explaining the project’s successful outcome:
“It was probably the best project we’ve done simply because we had more time to
design.” The same designer followed his train of thought further: “As time has gone on, 15
projects have gotten shorter and shorter. It’s very difficult now to do a good job.
We haven’t got the time.” This was in keeping with what was heard at the other
companies.
4.2.2 Joint definition phase. Two respondents were involved with the joint definition
phase that took place at the host company (system integrator) and lasted for nearly six
months. The purpose of this initial stage of the development process was to lay down
the bases of the structure of the airframe and therefore contributed to minimising
mistakes and drawing changes. The two respondents provided a positive account of
this experience, one of them saying that, “it was actually quite informative, the
different attitudes from the other companies”. A manager added that he had been
“lucky” during this project: “There were good guys [at the airframe integrator
company] who could spot problems easily.”
4.2.3 Digital design. During the Horizontal Stabilizer Project, designers had started
to work with CATIA for the first time. Although the implementation of the new design
tool does not appear to have been as painful as in the case presented earlier, it was not
entirely straightforward and led to some confusion. For instance, the preliminary
design definitions were created on CATIA, whereas manufacturing had been geared to
receive the detailed engineering dataset from the old computer-assisted design (CAD)
system.
4.2.4 Labour turnover and knowledge retention. Although the shortage of
personnel does not seem to have been as acute during this project as compared with
the eight other projects, a certain number of contractors had to be hired to design
the horizontal stabilizer. Since the contractors hired had very little experience with
composite materials, two senior designers took on the responsibility of teaching
them how to perform their task: “I had to basically start from scratch to show
them how to do the composite drawing.” At the end, the contractors proved to be
skilful and made a good contribution to the achievement of the structural design
project.
4.2.5 Lessons-learned exercises and legacy from past projects. The question of
lessons-learned exercises and project legacy was raised during the interviews and
comments proved to be particularly consistent. Six interviewees talked about a
drawing release process, called the “work flow system”, that was introduced during the
Horizontal Stabilizer Project and through which the release of a drawing had to be
“voted on” electronically. A manager explained: “Before this system came to exist,
there used to be rolls of drawings and whenever people moved around with these rolls
of drawings, they got lost.” Interestingly, there seemed to be a higher consensus on the
usefulness of this system as a legacy of the specific project, than on the designer
handbook developed at the previous company during the Cockpit Pressure Bulkhead
Project. This high level of consensus points to the collective nature of the process of
organizational knowledge creation (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).
IJQRM 4.3 Patterns emerging from the nine design projects
27,1 Table II summarises the research findings. The nine projects are listed from highest to
lowest performance, while the column headings refer to the salient practices and
context-related themes on which respondents have focused during the interviews.
The research evidence summarised in Table II suggests that the design process
performance is not easily explained and must be conceived as the result of a number of
16 interacting factors. For example, the performance of the Aileron B Project was average,
in spite of the collocation of the various engineering disciplines, the early inclusion of
manufacturing in concept definition and strong project leadership. It appears that the
positive effect of these practices was outweighed by time pressure and the painful
implementation of a new design tool.
The first column of Table II suggests a link between time pressure and design
rework. Indeed, the two design projects having generated the lowest number of design
changes were projects during which designers felt little time pressure. The second,
third and fourth columns of Table II cover various integration mechanisms used
during the design projects. Seven out of nine of the projects studied were conducted in
organizational contexts where concept definition, namely the early phase of the design
project, was a joint process among the various companies involved in the development
of the aircraft. In the context of risk partnership that now characterises the aerospace
industry, joint definition is a key aspect of the design process. Yet, as indicated in
Table II, the joint definition phase has tended to be problematic in five of the seven
projects in which risk partners were involved, although it went particularly well in the
highest performance project. On a positive note, comments by members of the projects
that were ranked 4th and 9th suggested partner integration improved with time.
The evidence gathered on the use of cross-functional integration, one of the key
NPD practices linked to NPD process performance in the literature, has indicated that
for the four projects that generated the highest number of changes, there was a lack of
integration between engineering disciplines, such as systems and structure, and/or
between organizational functions, such as design, methods and manufacturing. This
problem seems to have been less acute in the five highest performance projects.
Interestingly, the Saddle Tank Project obtained the second – best rank in the research
sample, even though the methods department was not involved in the design phase.
This project was conducted before the digital design era when drawings typically
contained less information and, as a result, opportunities for mistakes were less
frequent than today. The methods department could not give suggestions to improve
manufacturability while the drawings were produced; however they were able to make
a large number of additions to the drawings afterwards. “Methods had lots of room for
initiative”, as the senior engineer who had been in charge of the Saddle Tank Project
put it. While this old way of doing things did allow for some input from methods, it
does contrast with the cross-functional integration practices employed nowadays.
The fourth column of Table II indicates that collocation was used to a ranging
degree in seven of the projects studied (respondents giving conflicting answers about
the use of collocation in the case of the two remaining projects). This suggests that
collocation is a popular practice in aerospace design. Interestingly, the research
findings also point to the positive results of collocation on communication. Actually, in
most of the instances where collocation was used for the whole duration of the project
(2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th), communication was also very good. Good communication
 3. Cross- 7. Labour
1. Time 2. Joint definition functional 5. Communication shortage and
pressure phase integration 4. Collocation within the team 6. Leadership subcontracting 8. Design tools 9. Novelty

1. Horizontal Low time Successful joint Systems “should Conflicting Conflicting Clearly defined Contract Transition from High degree of
stabilizer pressure definition phase have been comments on comments about structure of designers had to old CAD system novelty
with partner involved earlier” whether quality of authority; be hired and to CATIA not
companies collocation was communication experienced trained; proved free of problems
used designers in lead to be skilful in
positions the end
2. Saddle Low time Not applicable Methods not Systems and Small team; Autocratic Same team 2D CAD and Evolution from
tank pressure (aircraft involved in structure in the excellent internal leadership (“one members from drawing board previous model
developed by a design phase same design communication – man show”) beginning to end (however
single company) team of project making room for
tank to increase
range was
challenging)
3. Forward Intense time Long joint Methods was Collocation of Good internal Structure of Designers lost to CATIA well Entirely made of
pressure pressure to definition phase involved; input the various communication authority not other aerospace implemented at new parts
bulkhead which with partner from engineering very clear; one companies the time of this
designers companies but manufacturing functions designer not project
adapted interaction not was regularly enjoying being
that good sought in lead position
4. Aileron A Some time Successful joint Close interaction Some collocation Some Clearly defined Detailed design CATIA well Low degree of
pressure definition phase with methods but not for the communication structure of contracted out implemented at novelty
(compared with but much less complete problems due to authority; and contract the time of this
previous with duration of large span of motivated team workers had to project although
projects) manufacturing project control although large be hired some contract
presence of workers were
contract workers less experienced
was a challenge with it
5. Aileron B Intense time First project Manufacturing Every Communication Charismatic Inexperienced Painful First time
pressure done with risk involved in engineering facilitated leadership designers introduction of company was
partners; some design meetings functions was because of formed a third of CATIA designing a jet
communication collocated in an collocation the design team component
problems with open area at the start of the (rather than
them project turboprop)
(continued)

structural design projects

in product design

Summary of the nine

Avoiding rework

17

Table II.
 18
27,1

Table II.
IJQRM

3. Cross- 7. Labour
1. Time 2. Joint definition functional 5. Communication shortage and
pressure phase integration 4. Collocation within the team 6. Leadership subcontracting 8. Design tools 9. Novelty

6. Vertical Increasing Joint definition Problem with Everybody was Constant day-to- Clearly defined Labour shortage CATIA well High degree of
stabilizer time pressure phase more or structure and in the same area day structure of implemented at novelty
less successful systems communication authority; the time of this
(not all the integration project manager project
designers could combining
take part in it) technical and
managerial skills
7. Aileron C Low time Not applicable Poor Everybody in Small team but Change of leader Not a problem Difficulties with High degree of
pressure (six sigma communication the same room, poor internal in the middle of during this the Design for novelty
(improvement redesign project with other “or not very far” communication the project project Manufacture
project) involving only engineering (DFMA)
one company) disciplines software
8. Aft Time wasted Difficult Systems “Structure, fluid Good internal Clearly defined Concept and Transition from High degree of
pressure because late integration designed by systems, flight communication structure of detailed design 2D CAD and novelty
bulkhead definition between another partner controls, and authority contracted out drawing – board
freeze partners company electrical to digital design
installations (other than
people were all CATIA)
sitting together” problematic at
first
9. Cockpit Intense time First project Poor Conflicting Poor internal Structure of Labour shortage Painful Low degree of
pressure pressure done with risk communication answers by communication authority in and turnover introduction of novelty (“we
bulkhead partners; with other respondents on (day and night place CATIA tried not to
integration functions and whether shifts) reinvent things”)
improved during engineering collocation was
subsequent disciplines used
projects
was especially missing in the lowest performance design project during which day and Avoiding rework
night shifts were used. in product design
As indicated in the sixth column of Table II, the Saddle Tank Project leader was said
to have been mainly autocratic, whereas the Aileron B Project team members admired
the charisma of their manager. The Aileron C Project was marked by a change of leader
half way through. The after-effects of these circumstances on the amount of design
rework are difficult to assess. However, whatever the personality type of the project 19
manager, there was a clear three-level structure of authority in the aerospace design
project studied, composed of project managers, lead designers – appointed because of
their experience – and designers. The labour shortage that characterises the aerospace
industry poses a challenge to a large proportion of project managers (1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th,
6th and 9th) as they either lost some staff during the project, or had to integrate less
experienced contract designers onto their team. Besides, a labour shortage and turnover,
the implementation of new design software can also be challenging. The eighth column
of Table II illustrates that design tool implementation problems were experienced
during four of the five lowest-performance projects. Finally, the degree of project novelty
is designated in the last column of Table II. The low performance of the Cockpit Pressure
Bulkhead Project is striking, as it is one of only three projects where the degree of novelty
had been low; and yet, it occupies the bottom of the ranking.

5. Discussion and conclusion

As shown in Figure 2, the industrial and organizational circumstances (or the
“backcloth”) of the projects studied have suggested that aerospace design rework could
be avoided, in the absence of organizational barriers such as poor implementation of
design tools and the insufficient promotion of the value of assembly operations.
Moreover, when design work is divided among various organizations located
in different regions, effective partner integration is another key success factor.
The three-level analysis has indicated that design practices such as cross-functional
integration, good communication, collocation, strong leadership and team tenure are
most likely to lead to a decreased amount of rework in the aerospace industrial context
where time pressure and labour shortages are considerable.

Design practices:
Cross-functional integration
Collocation
Good communication
Strong leadership
Team tenure

Removing organizational barriers to design quality:

Successful integration of partners
Active promotion of the sustaining phase
New CAD tools implemented with care/or already familiar to designers
Industrial context:
Figure 2.
Designer shortage is disruptive of learning Avoiding rework in
Time pressure for early market entry can have an impact on design quality and aerospace design
the number of changes
IJQRM 5.1 Integration mechanisms in action
27,1 Although the number of cases is too small to reach definitive conclusions, there seems to be
a link between design changes and the use of integration mechanisms, such as collocation
and cross-functional integration. It should be noted that even when the official answer to a
researcher’s question is that the company uses integration mechanisms, the way these
mechanisms operate in reality and their impact on project performance can vary.
20 For example, a designer complained about the way “integrated product development team
meetings” were organised during one project in which he was involved, saying that “there
were too many people attending those meetings”, that “ideas were never accepted” and
that “conversations kept going nowhere”. The negative impact of poor communication on
organizational performance is hardly to be questioned, yet the interviews carried out
during the study have suggested that good communication is not a guaranteed outcome of
the implementation of integration mechanisms. Generally speaking, however, designers
seem to believe that when the definition phase is conducted rigorously, with sufficient time
allocated to it and the right people involved in it, many problems can be resolved before the
structural design phase actually starts. This step appears to be essential in ensuring that
the product developed answers the expectations of all the stakeholders. In addition,
although the empirical evidence does not allow for the establishment of a clear conclusion
on the impact of collocation on the aerospace design process performance, all the designers
interviewed who did experience collocation appreciated it, because it helped them put their
work in a more global perspective. They value the constant interaction with other
engineering and functional disciplines and the possibility of obtaining rapid answers to
sudden questions.

5.2 Interaction between digital design and cross-functional integration

What kind of repercussions are there on the amount of design rework, when the
characteristics of the industrial and organizational context in which aerospace design
projects are conducted come into play? Projects conducted in an organizational context
where not enough attention is paid to the smooth transition from old to new design tools
may be characterised by higher amounts of design rework. Looking more specifically at
projects during which CATIA was used, it could be argued that digital design has the
potential to work in conjunction with cross-functional integration to increase the level of
coordination during a design project. Sitting at workstations connected to CATIA, each
designer contributes (and is made aware of the contribution of others) to the design of the
virtual mock-up appearing on screen. Brown et al.’s (2002) account of the development of
the Boeing 777 has illustrated the synergies between digital design and cross-functional
integration on project coordination. Nevertheless, the example of the Saddle Tank
Project, namely the second highest performance project, opens the door to different
interpretations. As mentioned before, drawings produced with sophisticated
three-dimensional design tools contain more information than those produced on old
drawing boards. As a result, there are more opportunities for mistakes. The input from
forward processes such as methods and manufacturing needs to be integrated with the
design process, accompanied by help from cross-functional integration mechanisms, in
order to reduce the number of opportunities for mistakes. It is intriguing that when
digital design helps to integrate the work of the various engineering disciplines, it needs
the support of cross-functional integration to limit the opportunities for mistakes that
increasingly detailed drawings can create.
5.3 Resolving the time-quality trade-off Avoiding rework
The nine structural design projects studied in this research were conducted in an in product design
industrial context where time pressure is constantly increasing. Although
time-to-market is identified as a key success factor in NPD (Stalk and Hout, 1990),
and authors such as Iansiti (1995) have proposed ways to increase speed, others have
highlighted the problems that may occur when development schedules are too
compressed. Higher speed is often achieved at the expense of design quality (Crawford, 21
1992) and, consequently, manufacturing cost (Oliver et al., 2004). In keeping with this
observation, the present research indicates that time pressure has a negative impact on
design quality: “You are already late before you start, you run head down and you
correct mistakes afterwards”, as a respondent put it. The time available to complete a
structural design project appears to have a direct bearing on design quality and the
quantity of drawing revisions. Indeed, as displayed in Table II, the two design projects
that have achieved the highest process performance are projects during which
designers felt little time pressure. In contrast, out of the five projects during which time
pressure was high, only one achieved a good ranking (third position).
How can we reduce the impact of time pressure on design rework? One designer
interviewed offered the following solution:
Project managers should find a way to create the sense of urgency earlier; they should be
firmer about the early milestones and about making sure that people are held seriously
accountable for the early milestones.
It could be argued that such clear messages may help to resolve trade-offs between
quality and productivity in product design, favouring a cumulative approach to
performance (Ferdows and De Meyer, 1990), such as the one that has developed in
operations management. The implications for design project management are that
leaders should spell out the imperatives for design teams in finding ways of working
both faster and better, which translates into working “smarter”, as one of the
respondents stated. Similarly, the research results suggest that, at the organizational
level, time pressure is not completely unavoidable and can be lessened by the effective
integration of the various companies involved. As a matter of fact, and as indicated in
Table II, in three of the four low performance projects, integration with partners was
not free of any problems. This finding suggests that the integrator should closely
monitor airframe development programs, in order to ensure that any relevant
information generated by one of the partners be transmitted to the others. In a context
of effective information sharing, design teams should be able to take into account
specification changes as soon as they occur.

5.4 The learning opportunities of the sustaining phase

The pressure for early market entry also seems to have an indirect effect on the design
process performance. Structural designers have appeared to develop an addiction to
time pressure. The constant rush and long work hours seemed to give them the feeling
of living their life to the fullest. At the end of a project, when the work slowed down,
they were eager to move to another project rather than staying in the scaled-down
design team in charge of sustaining production. “You create a problem and then you
leave”, as one designer declared, when he referred to the multiple learning
opportunities that are missed by designers. This carries some connotations for the
IJQRM management of the engineering function, since it suggests that companies should
27,1 nurture a culture in which supporting production is perceived as exciting. Labour
shortages, a second key characteristic of the industrial context in which aerospace
design projects are conducted, is also disruptive of learning. Losing designers to
competitors impairs team tenure, which is one of the factors that is believed to affect
product development process performance and, as such, was integrated in the initial
22 framework used in this research. The comments of the cockpit designer on the
difficulty of explaining to remaining colleagues everything that still needed to be done
to complete a task have suggested that people retention could aid in the capture and
retention of tacit knowledge and assist in its transfer from project to project (Oliver
et al., 2004). Unfortunately, because of a designer shortage, companies in the aerospace
industry often do not enjoy these benefits.

5.5 Managerial implications

Although the objective of the research reported in this paper was to help a single
aerospace company to improve the efficiency of its design process, the results
have nonetheless a number of implications for the aerospace industry as a whole. First,
the research approach suggests that managers should develop an awareness of the
various dimensions of NPD performance and an understanding of the specific impact of
various popular practices on each dimension of NPD performance. The empirical
evidence presented in this paper indicates that officially putting in place practices such
as collocation and cross-functional integration alone does not carry much weight,
without equally having proper forums where team members and organizational actors
from various functions and engineering disciplines can truly and efficiently
communicate. Lastly, time pressure has surfaced as a key issue in the aerospace
industry and constitutes a substantial obstacle to design process performance. In such
an industrial context, providing proper support to design teams, through strong
leadership and efficient partner integration is vital. Managers should also encourage
designers to value the support of assembly operations in order to counteract the indirect
upshot of time pressure on organizational knowledge creation and retention. The above
propositions which were included in the recommendations offered to the host company
after the study was completed could allow aerospace OEMs and their suppliers to
efficiently design defect-free aerospace components that comply with industry
regulations without relying on design rework and other traditional safety nets.

5.6 Future research avenues

Using an inductive approach, this research has provided a rich picture of product
design in a high technology sector, allowing for the identification of organizational
barriers that need to be removed for efficient product design. Whereas, managers do
not have much control over industrial factors such as labour shortage or time pressure
due to increased competition for early market entry, they can bring about structural
changes at the organizational level and heavily promote the implementation of best
design practices at the project level. However, further research is needed to understand
why some companies are better than others at doing this, in the same industrial sector.
This question is complicated by the fact that the product development process is one
that is beset by dilemmas and tradeoffs. Indeed, the research findings indicate that
design performance is the result of a number of interacting factors, with the attributes
of some practices being outweighed by the drawbacks of some organizational barriers. Avoiding rework
Similarly, favourable organizational characteristics could result in high product in product design
development project performance despite the poor implementation (or the absence of
the use) of design practices that, in theory, are associated with high performance.
Lastly, it might be appropriate to consider the question of NPD performance at the
project level and try to understand why NPD projects can go either well or badly in any
given organization. Interesting insights could be gained from looking at companies 23
where NPD project performance improves with time; companies that become aware of
organizational barriers to project performance and eventually remove them. It can be
suspected that such companies systematically conduct lessons learned exercises at the
end of each project and use formal information recording tools to compensate as much
as possible for employee turnover. Answers to the question of why project performance
improves with time would contribute to the growing body of literature that argues that
NPD is essentially a knowledge-creation activity.

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IJQRM About the author
Isabelle Dostaler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management, John Molson
27,1 School of Business, Concordia University. She holds a BAA and an MSc in Management from
HEC Montréal and a PhD in Management Studies from the University of Cambridge. She has
teaching interests in strategic management, aerospace and aviation management and operations
strategy. She has conducted research into NPD performance and practice, business strategy and
performance and supplier-buyer relationships in the electronics, automotive, aerospace and
26 aviation industries. Her research has been published in journals such as Journal of Air Transport
Management, Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research, Canadian Journal of
Administrative Sciences, Journal of High Technology Management Research, Gestion, Revue
Française de Gestion, Management, Revue Internationale PME, and Production and Operations
Management. She has recently conducted research for government agencies on subjects such as
the regional air transportation needs in Quebec and the Canadian aerospace supply chain
performance. Isabelle Dostaler can be contacted at: idostaler@jmsb.concordia.ca

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