Analysis of Risk Management Activities in the Design, Engineering, Development phases of Manufacturing Organizations

New Product or System development in a manufacturing industry is realized through the culminated efforts of different functional units, namely the Research and Development unit, the Supply Chain unit, the Design and Engineering Team, and finally the Manufacturing and Assembly units. The Design, Engineering and Development phase is a critical part of the entire product development lifecycle since it’s a process in which conceptualized ideas of the Research and Development unit or the Technological centers are given shape in the form of the first blue prints, which is further developed into the physical structure itself. The technical complexity of realizing a new technology, the interfaces and interdependencies amongst the different functional silos of the organization and the complexity of dealing with external suppliers and vendors leads to risks in the process of product development. These risks hamper the project in terms of quality of the product or system to be achieved, cost management and the time management of the project. Therefore it is necessary to adopt and practice certain important risk management activities which helps to be prepared to face such risks. Study of literature helped to realize that it is known what risk management is, and why it should be applied. However there is a gap of knowledge of how and what are the most effective and necessary risk management activities that should be adopted and practiced. An explorative multiple case study amongst three well established manufacturing organizations was carried out to study what are the best risk management activities practiced and adopted to manage risks on grounds of technological complexities, complexities and interfaces amongst the different functional silos in the organization and the risks which arose while dealing with the suppliers and vendors. The literature was used to develop the research protocol based on the risk management lifecycle. The protocol helped to build constructive questions which was used to investigate two past executed projects from each of the organizations chosen in the sample. The cases studied had realized at least the first prototype or the concept design successfully . Theory of consolidation was used to narrow down to twenty seven risk management activities. The next step in the research was to establish the most effective combinations of risk management activities. Using the concepts of fuzzy sets qualitative comparative analysis, the independent risk management activities were dealt as input conditions and the project outcomes in the context of quality of the product developed, the cost management of the project and the time management of the project was dealt as the dependent variable. The fsQCA tool was used to carry out the analysis by framing fuzzy data sets of the different conditions catering to technological risks, internal organizational risks and the external organization in the form of suppliers and vendors. The fsQCA analysis using the set and subset theory, analyzed the maximum consistency and coverage of the different combinations of the Risk management activities. This helped to conclude on the most important risk management activities on grounds of technical risks, internal organizational risks and the external organizational risks. The qualitative judgement of the cases helped to identify certain risk management activities which is essential to be practiced in order to make the combinations of the risk activities identified by fsQCA successful. The combination of the fsQCA analysis and the qualitative judgement helped to build up the Technological Risk activity model, the Internal organizational risk activity model and the External organizational risk activity model. These mentioned risk activity model are the main deliverables of the research on managerial terms. The fsQCA and the qualitative judgement further helps to establish relations between the independent risk activities and the dependent project outcomes which can be defined as the contribution to science. The added advantages and the contributions of the risk activities on the dependent project outcomes have also been discussed in the research. The study of the past executed projects help to conclude that risk management as followed in the literature is more algorithmic in nature with pre-defined steps, whereas risk management in actual practice is more aligned in towards a project management approach. The risk management framework followed in the organization is highly influenced by the driver of the project which could be quality, cost or time management of the project. The author deduces that larger the size of the organization, the more structured and streamlined is the risk management framework. Smaller the size of the organization, more informal is the risk management. In such organizations the risk management is almost carried out from the perspective of project management. Through the research it is realized that there are no perfect risk management activities, since even after taking immense precautions and adopting a vigorous risk management framework, the project can eventually meet some un conceived risks, which might completely hamper the process of execution. Therefore the prescription model recommended in the research, would enable the organization to be well equipped to face and counter the risks that evolve in the process of product development. The risk management activities as prescribed through the model should be primarily disciplined or institutionalized in the manufacturing processes.