Even though the work in the design phase puts a substantially burden on time and resources it is usually perceived as being more straightforward than the previous work. The work involved is inside the normal sphere of reasoning that d evelopment engineers are educated and trained in and with which they are familiar. There is an underlying danger in this as the development team may therefore be lulled into a false sense of security and perform the work in a strictly routine fashion.
 
Our experience shows that traditional design work has the potential for improvement. An example of this is demonstrated by the limited and often unsystematic use of powerful tools such as System Architecture, Modularisation, Robust Design, Design for Excellence (DFX), FMEA and Triz.
 
PDF-file of 48 pages A4 format.