Project task : member assignment using design structure matrix and genetic algorithm in concurrent engineering project management
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Date
2005
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Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Engineering
Abstract
In concurrent engineering, project tasks generally require the establishment of multifunctional teams to simultaneously consider various activities throughout the entire product life cycle. Team members from different functional departments of the company interact in every phase of development activities to design products and processes concurrently. This concurrent strategy increases the complexity of product development and design processes and makes teams difficult to organize. Without effective task coordination and team organization, the lack of communication and cooperation among team members in a large group of tasks could seriously delay the project completion. This research provides an integrated solution to overcome these difficulties. This research aims to model both project tasks and team members for the task-member assignments. To accomplish this, we develop an integrated framework that includes three major components: a project task model, a team member model and a task-member assignment model. The project task model optimizes the complex task structure using a Genetic Algorithm (GA), while Design Structure Matrix (DSM) identifies the three major project task types: independent, dependent, and interdependent. The team member model provides a quantitative representation for three important team member characteristics, namely functional knowledge, teamwork capability and working relationship. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and personality profiling using Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are used to obtain ratings of team member characteristics. According to the project task structure, quantified team member characteristics, and each member's workload schedule, the task-member assignment model accomplishes the ultimate goal of this research - assigning the right team members to the right tasks at the right time. The effectiveness of the developed methodology is demonstrated by an illustrative example.