Abstract
Of many functions involved in the realization and usage of products, product design has immense impacts on the performance of many other-than-design functions. It is known that many problems and inefficiencies occurred at other-than-design functions came from designers’ ignorance of these downstream constraints. However, traditional performance evaluation on R&D function provides little incentives for the designers to pay close attention on the wants and constraints of other-than-design functions. To address this problem, the study proposed an Integrated Performance Measurement System for Design for Excellence (DFX). The Authors integrated traditional “intra-functional” R&D performance evaluation system with a noval “Cross-functional” performance evaluation system taking into consideration the viewpoints of the other-than-design functions as the downstream “customers” of the design function. For cross-functional performance evaluation. The cross-functional goodness of any design can be measured based on the conformance of its design attributes to the desired cross-functional constraints. Performance evaluation over multiple designs can be aggregrated for the overall cross-functional performance values. For functional performance evaluation, traditional performance indices can be used to evaluate the intra-departmental performance. The performance can then be integrated with the cross-functional performance value by appropriate weights. Based on the above-mentioned concept, a VB.NET-based system was established to facilitate calculation of the performance once the individual data and weights are entered. Using the notebook computer industry as an example, contributions of the study include: 1.Establishing a model for integrated performance measurement system which will encourage designers to consider the wants and constraints from other-than-design functions thus creating a more trouble-free design in the downstream product realization and usage processes. 2.Establishing practical performance indices for the cross-functional and functional departments for notebook computer industry. 3.Establishing a VB.NET-based software which facilitate the calculation of the integrated performance measure and suggesting areas of improvements for the R&D function. Keywords：Cross-functional Performance, Performance Indices Management System, R&D Performance Evaluation, Notebook computer