Project Scheduling of New Product Development Process in Automotive Industry in Indonesia Using Design Structure Matrix (DSM)

Abstract

Innovation technology and development of customer needs diversification drive products to be more complex and the complexity changes the product life cycle become faster than before. Many industries try to create a more rapid new product development (NPD) process in order to enter the market and gain customer earlier than their competitors. Therefore, optimal timing and scheduling become important factors in the success of NPD process. This paper aims to perform project scheduling in NPD process of automotive industry in Indonesia by using Design Structure Matrix (DSM) and the result was compared with Critical Path Method (CPM) as one of conventional project scheduling method. DSM manage every task and information flow within a project including possibility of rework activity that might be occurred in NPD process. The results showed the scheduling technique using DSM calculated shorter development process duration rather than using CPM. DSM also considered possibility of rework activity that might be happened in the real situation.