A Four-Stage Framework for the Identification of Information Flow Inefficiencies in the Manufacturing Environment

A four-stage methodological framework useful to analyze the performance of a product development process, with a focus on the information flow inefficiencies is presented. The formal and informal communication exchange between interacting tasks is captured through the Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) representation, while the properties of the information flow structure are explored calculating metrics of Social Network Analysis (SNA). Information exchange inefficiency of process tasks is calculated performing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).