Megateam Design Management Process:

Concurrent development of integrated products has been a longstanding practice in engineering driven industries. However, many other organizations are just beginning to meet real challenges in this area. In a new context of demand for fast paced development and seamless integration, traditional single product companies have found they can no longer rely on a standard set of procedures for every problem, or follow traditional models previously used for individual product development.

For many reasons small companies often have difficulty organizing a development process that includes excellent design. One reason is lack of access to the best talents, or a lack of funds to support a comprehensive program to attract design talent, or lack of good design management to direct strong design efforts. A process which utilizes outside designers to interface with an experienced in house design manager, and a well chosen development team can be particularly valuable.

A process that allows a design manager to effectively orchestrate several outside independent designers on a project with a multi-disciplined in house team can exponentially improve the chances of creating successful products that are seamlessly integrated. The Megateam Design Management Process was created to address problems in this manner. It is a seamlessly integrated activity from initial research to end use. In addition its interdisciplinary organizational structure has an added dimension for expanding creative thinking.

Milcare Design Management and the Megateam

Milcare, a totally owned subsidiary of Herman Miller Inc., is a systems solution company where each new product development has to be evaluated in the perspective of the whole vocabulary of components. Even a minor engineering change will cascade across the entire system application. Milcare was the site of the first Megateam.

David Harris joined Milcare as the R&D program manager to develop new mechanisms and methodology for industry changing, fast track development. The brief from the company was to analyze market opportunity, define design efforts and manage the results through to commercialization, within a cross discipline team.