Design reviews in a digital world: a resource for mechanical engineering teams

Why Design Reviews Happen

In mechanical engineering, different types of design reviews happen at various stages, in various formats, for various reasons. But at their core, design reviews are the main source of collaboration in engineering design. Whether it’s between internal team members or along with external stakeholders, vendors, or suppliers—reviews are how input on a project is gathered from everyone who needs to give it. When design reviews are executed better, it leads to stronger collaboration. In turn, stronger collaboration leads to better products, better execution, and better results.

So, what is a design review? There are countless specific reasons why a design review might happen and countless specific ways that review could be executed. Overall, though, design reviews happen whenever different people involved in product development need to come together somehow and share information, engage others in providing their expertise, and decide on the next best course of action.

Ultimately, the reasons for conducting a design review can be categorized into three main buckets. Design reviews happen in order to:

• provide answers to questions,
• provide clarity around assumptions made, and/or
• to solicit guidance from subject matter experts.

Types of Design Reviews

Although the specific language and phrases used to describe a certain type of design review can often differ between different teams or organizations, there are some common review types that have distinct purposes and/or goals. This is by no means an exhaustive or authoritative list. Rather, it’s meant to be a helpful resource for anyone giving critical thought to the current design review processes on their own team.

Even if all these review types are familiar to you, it can be useful to look them over in the context of evaluating how your organization works together—and where there might be room for improvement.

The review types listed here are described in the broadest terms. As with terminology, the specifics of what’s involved in different review types can also vary across different companies. And in some cases, these reviews may be conducted during the same meeting or they may happen in parallel to each other.

Here are seven common types of engineering design reviews:

1. Requirements Review: Ensures requirements have been captured appropriately and that stakeholder needs have been adequately described.
2. System/Conceptual Design Review: Assesses system-level tradeoffs and feasibility of design concepts, and seeks buy-in from stakeholders to proceed with detailed design.
3. Preliminary Design Review (PDR): Focuses on technical matters, discusses strengths and weaknesses of design concepts and proposals, and leads to project updates.
4. Critical Design Review (CDR): Includes thorough review and analysis and typically happens before handoff of design from one phase to the next.
5. Test Readiness Review (TRR): Verifies requirements, test plans, and test apparatus designs in a specialized review prior to handoff for testing.
6. Final Design Review (FDR): Evaluates test results and addresses any issues that arose during testing.
7. Production Readiness Review (PRR): Includes review of first article inspection (FAI) results after initial manufacturing runs and informs revised manufacturing cost estimates.

Design Review Questions

Before kicking off a review process, it’s worth blocking 30 or 60 minutes in your calendar to ask yourself some basic engineering design review questions. This is an easy step to skip, but jumping straight into a review without mapping it out can result in wasted time and effort. The more you think things through upfront, the smoother the process will go once you get started.

When you sit down with a list of questions, it’s vital that you approach the exercise with a critical thinking mindset. It won’t do you any good to go through the motions and write down the first responses that come to mind. The point isn’t to simply answer the questions. The point is to use the questions as prompts to examine your design review process with a critical eye.

One useful framework to keep in mind is people > process > tools, in that order.

Considering the software and technology that supports your review process is important, but it shouldn’t be where you focus first. Instead, start with people. Think about your own team but also about all the other stakeholders that need to be involved at different points and in different capacities. Then determine how all those people communicate and collaborate in the existing process(es), plus what’s working well and what’s not. Once you’re clear on the people and process as things currently stand, then you’re ready to evaluate if your current tech is up to the task of supporting your team’s needs—or if you should be researching other options.

So what are some common questions for a design review?

The list below is meant to be a helpful starting point, but you might find there are other relevant questions that come to mind as you work through the list. You should feel free to tailor the questions to your team, or add your own. Again, the point is simply to get yourself thinking critically about your design reviews, how well they’re working, and what a more effective process might look like.

Eight design review questions you should ask before kicking off:

1. Does a design review meeting need to happen at all?
2. Who needs to be at the review, and who doesn’t?
3. What is the role of the customer in the design review process?
4. Who will lead this review?
5. Who will capture the feedback that comes from this review and how?
6. What is the procedure for dispute resolution?
7. What must be done ahead of time?
8. How will everyone connect?

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