
225Product Development andSystems Engineering
In reality, it is never that way. Product development is inherently interdisci-
plinary, and different disciplines are rarely synchronized, sequentially or in
parallel. The development process is also affected by many controllable and
uncontrollable factors. As a result, tasks interfere. Interference could imply
1. The tasks have to be done in a particular order.
2. The tasks create rework for each other.
3. At times no clear sequence or parallelism exists.
A design structure matrix (DSM) is a tool to capture such interdependen-
cies in different tasks of a product development process. It was proposed ...