Current healthcare delivery challenges are multi-faceted, requiring multiple perspectives to be addressed using a systems approach. However, a significant amount of healthcare systems design research work is carried out within single disciplines or at best a few disciplines working together. There appears to be little deliberate attempt to draw together a wide range of disciplines committed to working together to overcome differences and tackle some of the complex challenges in healthcare delivery. In this paper, we report on the initial outcomes of such an international initiative that, in the form of a workshop held at the University of Cambridge, brought together researchers and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines to explore the foundations of a community for Healthcare Systems Design Research and Practice.

With product customization companies aim at creating higher customer value and stronger economic benefits. The profitability of the offered variety relies on the quality of the developed product family architectures and their consistent implementation in configuration systems. Yet existing methods are informal, providing limited support for domain experts to communicate, synthesize and document architectures effectively. In single product design explicit visual models such as design structure matrices and node-link diagrams have been used in combination with structural analysis methods to overcome the limitation of the informal approach. Drawing on thereto established best practises, this paper evaluates and extends the relevant methods and modelling techniques, to create a consistent and formal approach for the design and customization of entire product families. To validate it's applicability, the approach is tested on a case study at a manufacturing company offering bespoke industrial applications. A generic modelling method termed the integrated design model (IDM) is developed and complemented with a computational structural analysis method, to assist domain experts in their daily work. When combined with a configuration system, the presented IDM tool automates the documentation and formalizes the synthesis of architectures, thereby making any decision about a preferred solution explicit and transparent.

Managing and improving organizational capabilities is a significant and complex issue for many companies. To support management and enable improvement, performance assessments are commonly used. One way of assessing organizational capabilities is by means of maturity grids. While maturity grids may share a common structure, their content differs and very often they are developed anew. This paper presents both a reference point and guidance for developing maturity grids. This is achieved by reviewing 24 existing maturity grids and by suggesting a roadmap for their development. The review places particular emphasis on embedded assumptions about organizational change in the formulation of the maturity ratings. The suggested roadmap encompasses four phases: planning, development, evaluation, and maintenance. Each phase discusses a number of decision points for development, such as the selection of process areas, maturity levels, and the delivery mechanism. An example demonstrating the roadmaps utility in industrial practice is provided. The roadmap can also be used to evaluate existing approaches. In concluding the paper, implications for management practice and research are presented.

Within organisations, decision makers have to rely on collaboration with other actors from different disciplines working within highly dynamic and distributed associated networks of varying size and scales. This paper develops control and influence networks within Design Structure Matrices (DSM); applying the Change Prediction Method (CPM) tool. It posits the idea of the 'Networks-in-Being' with varying individual and collective characteristics. [Social] networks are considered to facilitate information exchange between actors. At the same time, networks failing to provide trustedinformation can hinder effective communication and collaboration. Different combinations of trust may therefore improve or impair the likelihood of information flow, transfer and subsequent action (cause and effect). This paper investigates how analysing different types of network-structures-inbeing can support collaboration and decision-making by using the change prediction method as a way of scoping information propagation between actors within a network.

Communication permeates every aspect of an engineer's work-from clarifying product specifications to shaping social ties. This paper offers an overview of recommendations from literature to improve communication within and among engineering teams. We assume communication problems are often the outcome of underlying factors and that it is fruitful to study and improve these influences. Having been empirically elicited in prior research, 24 factors considered in this paper include, e.g., availability of information about product specifications, roles and responsibilities, and overview of sequence of tasks. To improve these factors in order to enable effective communication, this paper collates more than hundred recommendations from journal articles and textbooks published in the fields of engineering design, management science, sociology, and psychology. Recommendations include, for example, identify priorities through risk and bottleneck analysis, give clear descriptions and role expectations, and employ effective process modeling tools. Contributions of this paper are a list of recommendations for industry practitioners and an effort-benefit evaluation of individual recommendations.

Designing complex products, such as jet engines, cars or certain types of software, necessitates the coordination of activities of many participants during the design process. Communication is seen as the vehicle by which this coordination could be achieved. Communication itself is influenced by many different factors that are connected. This study presents an exploration of correlations between these factors based on statistical analyses of empirical data. The research uses data collected via the 'Communication Grid Method', (CGM) a structured maturity grid method to assess the perception of communication within and across team-interfaces. Five empirical studies in the aerospace, automotive, and IT industries where concurrent engineering is practiced are used. The results offer insights for researching and managing communication across inter-departmental interfaces. It has been shown in particular, how directly and indirectly linked factors influencing communication in product development form a network of correlations. Mutual trust and collaboration exhibit thematic centrality.

The design literature contains many diagrammatic models that represent the relationship between how designers intend artefacts to be experienced and how they are subsequently experienced by consumers, users and other stakeholders. Despite the prevalence of such models, they remain largely disconnected from each other, both within and across design disciplines, and also disconnected from the models of communication whose basic structure they share. The existing models are therefore difficult to locate and useful conceptual developments are often overlooked. The consequences of this are that unnecessary effort is expended in developing representations that duplicate those that already exist or new models are developed from inappropriate foundations. To address such issues, this article reviews many of the existing models that can be found in the different disciplines that comprise the fields of communication and design. The most pertinent features of these models are extracted and synthesised into a generic communication-based model of design. This acts as both a guide to what the existing models emphasise and an integrated foundation from which future models might be developed.

Communication is a critical success factor in design. How communication processes can best be captured, analysed and assessed, as a preliminary step to suggestions for improvement of communication practices, remains a challenge for researchers and practitioners. This paper critically reflects on the construction and application of a structured group interview in software design inspired by a maturity grid approach. Such an approach yields dual benefit: as a research method and tool to gather insight into communication and as a guide to plan improvements in practice. Initial results of an empirical study are presented. Conclusions are drawn for the process of auditing communication in design.