Risk Management in Product Design: Current State, Conceptual Model and Future Research

Risk management is an important element of product design. It helps to minimize the project- and product-related risks such as project budget and schedule overrun, or missing product cost and quality targets. Risk management is especially important for complex, international product design projects that involve a high degree of novel technology. This paper reviews the literature on risk management in product design. It examines the newly released international standard ISO 31000 “Risk management — Principles and guidelines” and explores its applicability to product design. The new standard consists of the seven process steps communication and consultation; establishing the context; risk identification; risk analysis; risk evaluation; risk treatment; and monitoring and review. A literature review reveals, among other findings, that the general ISO 31000 process model seems applicable to risk management in product design; the literature addresses different process elements to varying degrees, but none fully according to ISO recommendations; and that the integration of product design risk management with risk management of other disciplines, or between project and portfolio level in product design, is not well developed.