DICE Approach for Reducing Product Development Cycle

Constant global pressure to develop products more efficiently, in less time with fewer resources, has lead many organizations to examine techniques for achieving these goals. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a coordinated effort in concurrent engineering under the program “DARPA Initiative in Concurrent Engineering” (DICE) in July 1988. The program is a joint undertaking between a number of high-technology industrial firms and the academia.

DICE is a mission-oriented program to develop integrated information management technology and tools offering a systematic approach to the concurrent engineering development process for design and manufacture. DICE is intended to formalize and extend the multi-disciplinary “Tiger Team Approach”, often used in small enterprises, to more general use in large, geographically distributed organizations.

This paper provides a brief overview of the DICE program, describes concurrent engineering technology developed and the benefits demonstrated by a pilot project.