Product development: assessing the consistency of engineering design policies

The authors report on some implementation research that uses judgment capturing (JC) as a tool to reveal where conflicting views and policy ambiguities exist in the organization. This tool describes how differentiation can arise and foster inconsistent views which may be either healthy or dysfunctional. Having revealed these inconsistencies and voids in overall direction for a design project. JC then provides information for a group integrative exercise that leads toward better understanding of engineering design´s role for a more unified product development effort.<>