An Approach to Measuring Coupled Tasks Strength and Sequencing of Coupled Tasks in New Product Development

l a Abstract: To manage a new product development process is difficult because of the coupled tasks. Design structure matrix (DSM) is an effective tool to resolve this problem. The early research on DSM describes the tasks’ relationships by Boolean sign, and the focus of further research is how to measure the coupled strength and how to sequence the coupled tasks module. Based on the existent research, we construct a new method to measure the coupled strength and to calculate the first iteration’s gross workload of a different sequence of coupled tasks, thereby ascertaining the best sequence of coupled tasks. The method is illuminated by an example of a mechanical product design process, whose result suggests that the method can be manipulated in the real development process of a new product easily, and it overcomes the disadvantage of the existent research on measuring coupled strength subjectively.