| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,900,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
Fiscal Year 1998: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Recent 3D-CAD devices that feature 'solid modeling' can define virtually every attribute of a physical product, including its shape, size and mass, in terms of digital parameters, and has the ability to visualize the product. Whereas older 2D-CAD was aimed primarily at increasing the efficiency of individual design projects within existing development processes and organizations, the benefits accruing from the latest 3D-CAD may require a fundamental change in development processes. The objective of this study is to report results of our questionnaire survey that was conducted to identify potential benefits and problems associated with the introduction of this new technology.
This paper first reports overall patterns of 3D-CAD diffusion, based on data obtained from 169 Japanese machinery-related manufacturing firms. Then, we explore organizational factors influencing 3D-CAD introduction, and empirically examine the impact of 3D-CAD on various performance outcomes.
Our results shows that,
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although nearly 65% of sample companies have already introduced 3D-CAD, companies using 3D-CAD as a main design tool either at the corporate or the division level are even less than 10%. To identity the reason for this slow diffusion, we compare various factors between 'early adopters' and 'others'. We found that early adopters tend to capture 3D-CAD as a technology to improve information exchange between different functional departments and collaborative companies and promote concurrent development processes. They also recognize importance of redefining task partitioning and reallocating human capital. In addition, early adopters have top-down processes with corporate-level dedicated projects in introducing 3D-CAD ; other companies tend to delegate introduction initiatives to design engineering departments.
These findings imply that having an idea of 'global' optimization to improve the entire development process, rather than 'local' optimization within each function, is necessary to facilitate 3D-CAD introduction. Less
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