A global approach to manage the performance of the problem solving process in innovative design

Abstract

This article focuses on the problem solving process in design. Today, enterprises face an important need of innovation, as they have to regularly propose new products or new services. Design is one of the key activities of enterprises in order to be innovative, but it is also one whose performances are hard to assess and activities difficult to manage. Studies on performance of the design process are quite few. Despite there exists many tools to evaluate and manage performance in a variety of fields, few tools are proposed Please check and confirm the author names and initials. Amend if necessary.or customized for the design activity. Some parts of this activity are more or less manageable, but one remains hardly controllable: the problem solving process. Three main topics are tackled in this article. Firstly, the article defines the performance, the enterprise organization, the design activity and the role of problem solving in this activity. Then the focus will be done on the ways to measure and manage the performance of problem solving in design; criteria to evaluate it and a set of indicators that impact it are proposed. In last, the use of this set of indicators will be proposed and a link between the indicators and a strategic choice will be established in order to build the problem solving process in accordance with this strategic position.