A structured approach for assessing the effectiveness of engineering design tools in new product development

This article presents an approach for assessing the effectiveness of engineering design tools applied within new product development (NPD). In this approach both the quality of the process used to apply the design tool and the quality of outputs generated by the design tool are assessed. The approach described was developed and piloted in an engineer-to-order (ETO) company. The specific assessment instruments created are also presented. Future work will include investigating the use of the approach for additional design tools and analyzing how design tool effectiveness relates to overall product launch effectiveness.