^ (librariesi ^ Sloan School of Management Working Paper Deciding between Sequential and Parallel Tasks in Engineering Design Working Paper Number 3858

It is generally desirable to complete design tasks in parallel in order to reduce the overall development time. However, completing tasks in parallel may sometimes increase the total amount of rework that must be done, thereby increasing the total engineering effort, the development cost and the lead time. The technique described in this paper helps to decide between serial and parallel scheduling of multiple tasks in a two-stage design process. Using information about task interdependencies, this method calculates the amount of time and the amount of effort (in engineer-weeks) required for any suggested assignment of tasks to the two stages. The paper suggests an approach for minimizing time, or effort, or both by adjusting the schedule of which tasks should be completed at which time. The method is applied to data from a computer workstation design problem.