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A five-year study reveals that the highly successful Toyota Motor Corporation seems to follow a different paradigm of design than other US and Japanese auto companies. This paper outlines 11 principles that appear to form the foundation of Toyota’s use of “Set-Based Concurrent Engineering.” Discussion of the principles includes illustrations from Toyota.

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Rework that occurs late in the product life cycle is dramatically more expensive than design work performed early in the cycle. However, shifting traditional design work earlier in the design process so as to avoid rework later is difficult. A number of product development practices that have been characterized as a shift from developing a single-point design to developing a set of possible designs have proven effective at reducing development rework. This paper refines the definitions of such "set-based" development practices, which are aimed at early development phases, and shows how they can be applied to the systems engineering process in order to reduce or eliminate the root causes of rework. Examples from the Wright Brothers, Toyota, and several other companies are presented.

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