Review of Research into the Nature of Engineering and Development Rework: Need for a Systems Engineering Framework for Enabling Rapid Prototyping and Rapid Fielding

Given the need to develop a systems engineering framework to enable rapid prototyping and rapid fielding capability for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) per Public Law 114-92 and the fact that historically rework has been a problem during product development, a literature survey of engineering and design rework was conducted to better understand its nature and causes. The intent of the survey is to present the current state of research in the understanding of this aspect of development and to articulate future research areas for developing a systems engineering framework during the Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction (TMRR) phase of the DOD life cycle that addresses rework concerns, accelerates iteration and enables rapid prototyping. Since much of the research on rework has been done on information exchange and organizational structure there is a need for future research in systems engineering to develop frameworks to: 1) mitigate the impact of information uncertainty and instability, 2) accelerate information evolution, and 3) reuse knowledge for engineering reasoning.