Original Date: 04/20/1998
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

ITT Aerospace/Communications Division’s (A/CD’s) Design Engineering instituted Peer Review as an initiative for design evaluations. This initiative established a documented, informal, design review process. Previously, no documented process existed. Although informal reviews were performed individually by default on smaller programs, larger programs had difficulty with technical coordination and implementation. In these cases, designs tended to be disjointed, minimal operational department involvement which led to a lack of available support during the production phase.

The requirement for Peer Reviews is delineated in the Design Review Manual. Design engineers invite operations experts and experienced engineers from various departments to attend informal presentations and evaluate their proposed designs. Peer Review allows the efficiencies obtained from smaller programs to be projected into larger programs through closer technical coordination with other operational departments. This teaming effort has improved the design quality at ITT A/CD by promoting communication between the Electrical, Mechanical, and Design Engineering departments, yet still maintains its focus on the customer’s requirements and satisfaction. In addition, Peer Review acts as a mentoring vehicle so inexperienced design engineers can gain insight from experts in attendance. Overall, ITT A/CD gains the best technical approach to designing by achieving concurrence from all departments and by conducting cross-functional training of design review attendees.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.