Mitigation Strategies to Prevent Engineering Design Quality Defects

Abstract

A prior study identified factors that contribute to engineering design defects and assessed the relative magnitude of the impact of those factors. This paper provides 40 mitigation strategies for engineering design defects and analyzes survey responses assessing the expected effectiveness and expected ease of implementation of each. Because each mitigation strategy was associated with at least one defect, and each defect was associated with at least one design deliverable, the authors were able to identify the mitigation strategies that were the easiest to implement and the most effective for the associated defects and deliverables. This paper’s primary contributions to the body of knowledge are the development of mitigation strategies for engineering design defects and the identification of mitigation strategies that are most effective and that provide economy of effort. This research not only advances the body of knowledge in engineering design management but also provides criteria to field practitioners for managing engineering design quality and eliminating or mitigating engineering design defects, focusing on the low-hanging fruit of mitigation strategies that are easiest to implement and most effective for particular defects and deliverables.