Project scheduling for collaborative product development using a design structure matrix

New Product Development (NDP) is an important and complex business process. It constitutes a major contributor to the business excellence of any industry. In recent years, NDP has become more and more competitive and globalised. However, scheduling and managing the global collaborated NPD process for large projects is a difficult exercise that requires much effort and experience. An examination of current project scheduling tools reveals the weakness in various areas, such as sequencing, monitoring and controlling the NPD process. This paper presents a project scheduling and rescheduling framework based on DSM (Design Structure Matrix) to deal with the weakness mentioned. An example is provided to illustrate the proposed framework.