Organizational Characteristics for Successful Product Line Engineering

In recent years, there has been an increasing demand in the aerospace industry
to reduce the time and money it takes to develop a new system or product. To address that demand, there have been several successful initiatives such as “total quality management” (TQM), “six sigma”, and “lean enterprise”, which have made improvements in the area of product development. However, the challenge still exists to make further progress. Initiatives utilizing “reuse”, “commercial-off-the-shelf” (COTS) products, and “product line engineering” have emerged from the consumer electronics and automobile industries and show great potential for influencing additional product development enhancements in the aerospace industry. Although there have been successful applications of reuse, COTS, and product lines [1, 2, 3], these practices are by no means easy to accomplish, especially in the aerospace industry.