The documentation of corporate approaches to design management to share experience and improve performance

Abstract If Technical Directors of manufacturing enterprises are concerned about the design standards achieved by their organisations, what elements of the way design is managed should they investigate to determine how performance might be enhanced? If senior executives are asked to describe the way their organisations manage design activities — say, to a national conference of peers — what points might their presentations cover? Both these questions will be attracting greater attention in the future as the critical contribution of design to profitability in industry gains recognition. Published literature on how organisations manage design is sparse. Most descriptions are superficial and few cover the same ground. Consequently the opportunities for making comparisons between the particular circumstances and approaches of different organisations — hence for distilling lessons which might lead to improved performance — are negligible. The considerable benefits which could be gained from sharing experience are wasted. This paper outlines a pilot project set up recently to rectify this situation. Its aims are to document the different approaches of a range of business enterprises to the management of their design activities under a common set of headings . As far as can be ascertained, this represents the first attempt to produce such consistent reference material.