Improving the architecture of product development process (PDP) is an effective approach to improve PDP performance. However, performance is difficult to model because the criterion of performance such as development cost, time and product quality are usually contradictory. The objective of this paper is to use process value as the evaluation indicator of PDP performance. The process value of PDP, as well as the ratio of process function and process cost, is discussed and its quantitative method is proposed. The process function is defined as the process effectiveness which considers the importance of each activity of PDP, and its evaluation methods based on rework theory and quality function deployment (QFD) are given. The simulation method is used to illustrate the proposed model and analyze the relation between architecture and process value of PDP, and an optimization model for PDP architecture is provided. With the model, we can get a suitable PDP architecture to balance the cost and product function during product development.

The appropriate iteration process model is the basis for managing and optimizing the product development process. In this article, we attempt to introduce the concept of process effectiveness and process value. The relationship between rework probability and process effectiveness is discussed. The evolution function of process effectiveness is proposed to drive the overlapped iteration process of multi-coupled activities. The evolution process with input information update is studied, and a simulation model is presented to obtain the accurate iteration process of development. It is useful to analyze the risks during development, and has good flexibility and versatility. The calculation method of process value for overlapped iteration process is given, and an optimization model for product development process is provided. The model is used to improve the development process of the stamping die of a car roof. With the model, we can get a suitable overlapping rate of multi-coupled activities to improve development performance.

It is an important QFD decision problem to determine the engineering characteristics and their corresponding actual fulfillment levels. With the increasing complexity of actual engineering problems, the corresponding QFD matrixes become much huger, and the time spent on analyzing these matrixes and making decisions will be unacceptable. In this paper, a solution for efficiently solving the QFD decision problem is proposed. The QFD decision problem is reformulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model, which aims to maximize overall customer satisfaction with the consideration of the enterprises' capability, cost, and resource constraints. And then an improved algorithm G-ICA, a combination of Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA) and genetic algorithm (GA), is proposed to tackle this model. The G-ICA is compared with other mature algorithms by solving 7 numerical MINLP problems and 4 adapted QFD decision problems with different scales. The results verify a satisfied global optimization performance and time performance of the G-ICA. Meanwhile, the proposed algorithm's better capabilities to guarantee decision-making accuracy and efficiency are also proved.

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Product function configuration is important for customer satisfaction and enterprise profitability. In this paper, we attempt to apply the value engineering theory to optimize the configuration scheme. The concepts of customer perceived benefit, enterprise perceived cost and product function configuration value are discussed. The evaluation method of value elements based on utility theory is proposed, to quantify the function configuration value. The value model perfectly integrates the interests of the customer and the enterprise. The product function configuration optimization model is established and used to optimize an automatic transmission product configuration scheme. This optimization model based on value analysis can realize the game equilibrium between the customer and the enterprise, which attaches importance to the subjective feelings of them.