The original edition of this book summarized more than a decade of work on communications flow in science and engineering organizations, showing how human and organizational systems could be restructured to bring about improved productivity and better person-to-person contact. While many studies have been done since then, few of them invalidate the general conclusions and recommendations Allen offers. In a new preface he points out new developments, noting areas that need some modification, elaboration, or extension, and directing readers to the appropriate journal articles where the findings, are reported. The first three chapters provide an overview of the communication system in technology, present the author's research methods, and describe differences in the career paths and goals of engineers and scientists that cause special problems for organizations. The book then discusses how technological information is acquired by the R & D organization, shows how critical technical communication within the laboratory is for R & D performance, and originates the idea of the \"gatekeeper,\" the person who links his or her organization to the world at large. Concluding chapters take up the influence of formal and informal organization and of architecture and office layouts on communication. Many of these ideas have been successfully incorporated by architects and managers in the design of new R & D facilities and complexes. Suggested Citation Handle: RePEc:mtp:titles:0262510278 Download reference as HTML Thomas J. Allen, 1984. \"Managing the Flow of Technology: Technology Transfer and the Dissemination of Technological Information Within the R&D Organization,\" MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262510278, November. More services and features MyIDEAS Follow serials, authors, keywords & more New papers by email Subscribe to new additions to RePEc Author registration Public profiles for Economics researchers MPRA Upload your paper to be listed on RePEc and IDEAS EconAcademics Blog aggregator for economics research Plagiarism Cases of plagiarism in Economics Rankings Various rankings of research in Economics & related fields RePEc Genealogy Who was a student of whom, using RePEc RePEc Biblio Curated articles & papers on various economics topics Job market papers RePEc working paper series dedicated to the job market Fantasy league Pretend you are at the helm of an economics department Services from the StL Fed Data, research, apps & more from the St. Louis Fed IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.

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Managing the Flow of Technology: Technology Transfer and the Dissemination of Technological Information Within the R&D Organization (Book Review)

Project scheduling under uncertainty survey and research potentials

The design structure matrix (DSM), also called the dependency structure matrix, has become a widely used modeling framework across many areas of research and practice. The DSM brings advantages of simplicity and conciseness in representation, and, supported by appropriate analysis, can also highlight important patterns in system architectures (design structures), such as modules and cycles. A literature review in 2001 cited about 100 DSM papers; there have been over 1000 since. Thus, it is useful to survey the latest DSM extensions and innovations to help consolidate progress and identify promising opportunities for further research. This paper surveys the DSM literature, primarily from archival journals, and organizes the developments pertaining to building, displaying, analyzing, and applying product, process, and organization DSMs. It then addresses DSM applications in other domains, as well as recent developments with domain mapping matrices (DMMs) and multidomain matrices (MDMs). Overall, DSM methods are becoming more mainstream, especially in the areas of engineering design, engineering management, management/organization science, and systems engineering. Despite significant research contributions, however, DSM awareness seems to be spreading more slowly in the realm of project management.

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Design Structure Matrix Extensions and Innovations: A Survey and New Opportunities

There is a number of criteria and associated sub‐criteria influencing the match of managers to construction projects. Criteria and sub‐criteria were identified based on a thorough review of the related literature and interviews of management personnel involved in the project managers selection. Project managers characteristics are considered to be less important for an effective project management. The model is based on multicriteria evaluation of project managers. The evaluation embraces the identified criteria influencing the process of construction project manager selection. This paper considers the application of grey relations methodology to defining the utility of alternatives, and offers a multiple criteria method of Complex Proportional Assessment of alternatives with grey relations (COPRAS‐G) for analysis. In this model, the parameters of the alternatives are determined by the grey relational grade and expressed in terms of intervals. A case study presents the selection of construction p...

Multicriteria selection of project managers by applying grey criteria

Every design problem begins with an effort to achieve fitness between two entities: the form in question and its context. The form is the solution to the problem; the context defines the problem. We want to put the context and the form into effortless contact or frictionless coexistence, i.e., we want to find a good fit. For a good fit to occur in practice, one vital condition must be satisfied. It must have time to happen. In slow-changing, traditional, unselfconscious cultures, a form is adjusted soon after each slight misfit occurs. If there was good fit at some stage in the past, no matter how removed, it will have persisted, because there is an active stability at work. Tradition and taboo dampen and control the rate of change in an unselfconscious culture's designs. It is important to understand that the individual person in an unselfconscious culture needs no creative strength. He does not need to be able to improve the form, only to make some sort of change when he notices a failure. The changes may not always be for the better; but it is not necessary that they should be, since the operation of the process allows only the improvements to persist. Unselfconscious design is a process of slow adaptation and error reduction. In the unselfconscious process there is no possibility of misconstruing the situation. Nobody makes a picture of the context, so the picture cannot be wrong. But the modern, selfconscious designer works entirely from a picture in his mind - a conceptualization of the forces at work and their interrelationships - and this picture is almost always wrong. To achieve in a few hours at the drawing board what once took centuries of adaptation and development, to invent a form suddenly which clearly fits its context - the extent of invention necessary is beyond the individual designer. A designer who sets out to achieve an adaptive good fit in a single leap is not unlike the child who shakes his glass-topped puzzle fretfully, expecting at one shake to arrange the bits inside correctly. The designer's attempt is hardly as random as the child's is; but the difficulties are the same. His chances of success are small because the number of factors which must fall simultaneously into place is so enormous. The process of design, even when it has become selfconscious, remains a process of error-reduction. No complex system will succeed in adapting in a reasonable amount of time or effort unless the adaptation can proceed component by component, each component relatively independent of the others. The search for the right components, and the right way to build the form up from these components, is the greatest challenge faced by the modern, selfconscious designer. The culmination of the modern designer's task is to make every unit of design both a component and a system. As a component it will fit into the hierarchy of larger components that are above it; as a system it will specify the hierarchy of smaller components of which it itself is made.

Notes on the Synthesis of Form. By Christopher Alexander. Pp. 191. 54s. 1964. (Harvard University Press.)

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00163412/document

Competency characterisation by means of work situation modelling

Modular product design has received great attention for about 10 years, but few works have proposed tools to either jointly design the functional and physical architectures or propagate the impact of evolutions from one domain to another. In this paper, we present a new method supporting the product architecture design. In new product development situations or in re-engineering projects, system architects could use this method in the early design stages to predetermine cohesive modules and integrative elements and to simulate a domain architecture by propagating architecture choices from another domain. To illustrate our approach, we present an industrial case study concerning the design of a new automobile powertrain.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00381061/document

A Fuzzy Method for Propagating Functional Architecture Constraints to Physical Architecture

In order to limit the effects of technological change on product design, concepts such as product architecture and modularity have been introduced, in order to support complex product development. ...

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Simulating change propagation between product architecture and development organisation

Le caractere collectif des activites de conception necessite le developpement de methodes et d’outils pour la maitrise des processus de conception et des activites collaboratives. Le groupe de travail est assimile a un systeme constitue d’entites en interactions de differentes natures et regi par des mecanismes de regulation et de coordination. Nous nous interessons ici a la modelisation d’une situation de conception collaborative. Apres une definition de la situation et la description de differentes perceptions de ce concept, nous proposons un modele de situation dans lequel nous caracterisons les entites de differentes natures qui sont en interactions. Une classification des relations entre ces entites est proposee. Les perspectives de ce travail sont de contribuer a l’amelioration d’outils permettant de supporter une situation de conception collaborative et de capitaliser ces connaissances en vue d’une reutilisation efficace.

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Maryvonne Dulmet

Papers

Competency characterisation by means of work situation modelling

A Fuzzy Method for Propagating Functional Architecture Constraints to Physical Architecture

Simulating change propagation between product architecture and development organisation

Démarche de modélisation d'une situation de conception collaborative

Proposition of a Situation Model in View to Improve Collaborative Design