Organization of large engineering design departments

Six design departments in different industries have been studied in order to compare theory and practice in the choice of systems for the division of work and for the coordination of projects in design. Taking a bigger sample of departments, comparisons have been made of the proportion of designers employed on coordination rather than 'actively' employed on design. The results of the six case studies show that the chief influences on systems of organization are the programme of design of projects and the extent to which projects are designed to order. Uniqueness of a project appears to be significant, rather than technical novelty, and choice of system does not appear to depend upon branch or variety of the technical content of design. The level of responsibility for a project in design is found to be related to risk to the firms in the decisions made in design. The numerical comparisons indicate that the proportion of designers in a department employed on coordination is dependent upon the number of designers working together on a project. This proportion is not related to the technical content of design, to variety or novelty in this, or to the proportion of number of engineers to number of draftsmen and technicians. The work shows that design departments in different industries can usefully be compared as the purpose and the process of design is common.