A Study on DSM Partitioning Through Case Study Approach

Abstract

Planning for design process is often ignored and given least importance. Design phase of any project is associated with continuous and abundant information exchanges across the different teams. If these evolving design information exchanges are not perceived and planned during the early stages of a project, it results in adhoc information exchange, mistakes or rework. Over the past decade, researchers had identified DSM (Design Structure Matrix) as a potential tool to manage the information interdependencies and to evaluate the sequence of execution. DSM is a square matrix with the same elements (elements signify teams, components, activities or parameters) in the rows and columns and the off-diagonal cells represent the dependency relationship between those elements. The basic DSM operations such as partitioning and tearing enable the user to evaluate the feasible execution sequence. In reality, generating a basic DSM is tedious and time-consuming. Hence, an attempt was made in the present study to analyze if there exist any correlation among the various types of DSMs (team DSM to parameter DSM or activity DSM to team DSM, etc.) formed. To achieve this objective, data was collected for an offshore project through interactions and discussions with experts of the eight teams for several weeks. For the current study, four teams—mechanical, HVAC, piping and structure which interact frequently was considered. To ease the analysis, deliverables DSM and team DSM was only considered. Through partitioning process, the sequences of deliverables and teams were determined and other elements such as parameters or activities were ignored. It was observed that there exists no relation between the different DSMs formed.