Providing a causal model of risk management in the product family development process by grounded theory and structural equation modeling: Case study, The Iranian automotive industry

Abstract

The product family development process is a response to the diversified needs of markets and different customer clusters by a group of products with two fixed section part and variable section. The process is always faced with risks, usually not knowing the causative risks and the relationships between them. Also, the independent risk assumption leads to effectiveness decrease and deviations from achieving the expected results. Pay attention to the experiences of experts in mitigating risks, will lead to success. Along determining the dimensions of external and internal context, risks of the product family development process are identified by focusing on the grounded theory based on the experiences of 18 experts in Iranian automotive industry. A structural equation modeling approach was used to determining the interaction of risks and recognizing the risks that cause other risks. The results of studies and calculations led to recognition of needs risk, requirement risk, performance risk, design risk, scheduling risk, manufacturing/outsourcing risk and financial risk, also clustering of customers risk, parts design feature technical risk and modularity risk are firstly specified to the product family development process. Mitigate of risks in the early stages, leads to less occurrence probability of late-stage risks. As example to reduce financial risk, the risks that affect it, namely scheduling risk and manufacturing / outsourcing risk, must be managed. The executive managers could achieve greater success by focusing on controlling the root cause of objective risk, and make progress with more certainty.

Keywords

• product family developing process
• risk management
• grounded theory
• structural equation modeling