Design Reviews and their Impacts on the Enterprise Life Cycle

Masters Thesis from the year 2004 in the subject Engineering - Mechanical Engineering, grade: sehr gut, Stellenbosch Universitiy (Department of Industrial Engineering), language: English, abstract: The design and development of general Product Life Cycles (PLC) and Enterprise Life Cycles (ELC) has received significant attention over the past years. The EDENTM Software Environment developed from Indutech (Pty) Ltd provides roadmaps for both life cycles. These roadmaps allow the involved development team to follow a predefined step-by-step structure for their respective project. As a PLC always belongs to a superior ELC, both life cycles cannot be considered independently. Changes and decisions of one of the life cycles usually have an impact on the other. And although the PLC and ELC are well explored, there does not exist a model which reveals those important interfaces between both life cycles. This thesis aims on the detection of impacts of the PLC on the ELC. As the Design Review (DR) is a crucial key control element in the development process, the detection of the links is done by means of such DR. After giving general information about DR and providing definitions and descriptions of DR in the PLC and ELC, an impact-matrix is developed which shows the detected interference of the ELC by decisions of DR conducted in the PLC.