The Novel Use of a Capability Maturity Model to Evaluate the Mechanical Design Process

This paper describes a process improvement study undertaken at three sites of UK electromechanical engineering companies, using a derivation of the Carnegie-Mellon/SEI Systems Engineering Capability Maturity Model ®(SE-CMMSM) called the Process Capability Model — Mechanical Design (PCM-MD). The model was applied within a traditional engineering discipline domain, namely mechanical design. The new assessment tool was piloted on a sample of nine mechanical engineers and eight design engineers as well as some ancillary functions, such as stress and thermal analysis. This was expanded to take into account the views of the downstream manufacturing disciplines and was then subsequently rolled-out into the other companies. The results from these studies support the view that the SE-CMM can be adapted and used in CMM-type assessments for mechanical design process benchmarking.Key words: