Formerly Managing Complex Product Development Projects

Managing complex technical projects is a massive integration effort at many levels. Product and production plans must be integrated into components, components into subsystems, subsystems into systems and systems into quality products.

Traditional project management does not provide the kind of detail required today to both accelerate product and service development and improve product and service quality in the 21st century. Managing Complex Technical Projects presents a revolutionary design structure matrix (DSM) that MIT researchers use to determine which tasks within each phase of a complex project should or should not be performed concurrently. The DSM method is already applied in a number of corporations.

MIT researchers developed the DSM modeling approach to learn how to solve problems facing large-scale projects. After field-testing DSM in dozens of organizations and industries around the world, they found that it successfully streamlined the development of a wide array of projects including:

• complex automotive components systems and subsystems
• aerospace configuration design
• concept development and program roll-out
• electronics and semi-conductor development
• equipment and machine tool development
• plant engineering
• construction projects
• complicated service development and delivery projects

Join the MySloanExecEd Community Group for this program to network with past, present, and future participants.

Through lectures, exercises, interactive discussions, and teamwork, participants in the program learn how to use DSM to map complex and often highly-technical procedures into simple arrays. Most important, they learn how to solve five key problems that confound complex project management: iteration, overlapping tasks, architecture, decomposition and integration.

In Managing Complex Technical Projects, participants learn to:

• better document existing procedures
• reduce complexity
• share data with confidence
• facilitate project flow
• expose constraints and conflicts
• design iteration strategically

Managing Complex Technical Projects is designed for senior managers involved in complex product development, highly-interdependent system and service development and delivery, and project management as well as those responsible for speeding up the process of improving design procedures and designing and developing better products and services. The primary focus is on technical, engineering-driven products, services, and processes, although discussion around others is welcomed as applicable. Participants include:

• vice presidents of engineering, manufacturing, and technology
• directors of project, program or service management
• product, service and business development
• engineering and R&D program managers
• chief project engineers
• product design and process development engineers
• technology strategists
• project leaders

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  Dr. Eppinger is absolutely excellent at instructing, demonstrating and teaching about innovative methods to manage complex projects. DSM is the way to go!

  
  
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  The program has been excellent. Prof. Eppinger has been able to provide us, in a very short time, the key information on how to manage complex products, processes and organizations using the DSM approach, including several application examples. Wonderful class!!

  
  
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  The DSM technique is very well explained in the class. Was able to immediately apply the tool and concepts the following week at work to accelerate and provide much more clarity for a cross functional team working on a strategic project.

  
  
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  The program provided comprehensive insight to both common and cutting-edge project dynamics. A variety of tools were utilized to manage business projects.

  
  
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  This was the best program of the 4 required for the certificate. Synthetic, lot's of real cases and straight to the point.