I don't have any experience working in the industry. But I will add that each company is different. From my graduate students who worked in the industry each share a different point of view depending on the company they work for or the team they work with. Some people had a open communication in the meeting where all inputs were taken into consideration and any disagreements were shared openly and asked to further discuss. While other people said certain inputs were not even considered because the project manager or the other stakeholders simply did not care. So the culture of review meetings I would say depends on which team you are in and which company or project you are working on. Whatever the culture may be, at the end of the day, these review meetings are crucial to successful completion of any project.

In my opinion, the project review meetings are vital for delivering the status of the project to executive management and other stakeholders, it provides them with the updates and the major milestones of the project, while addressing any emerging issue within the project. But one problem with these monthly meetings is that no matter how efficiently they are run and how many projects they have covered in a short period of time they are still expensive. As these meetings tie up critical management resources for half a day to a day in the meeting itself, and meeting preparation time is a further hit on project managers. But an interesting thing about these meetings are that it makes the whole team active and they try to nail the next milestone to be able to present in front of the higher management and stakeholders.

While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat, the culture for the design review meeting was rather relaxed. The design review meeting is schedule at least 4 weeks in advanced so there is ample time to review the documents and discuss changes before the actual meeting. The general attitude is that it was a formality where everyone gets in one room to review the changes and sign off on it. All the work is done prior to the actual meeting. Before the actual meeting when you send out the meeting invite, you send out the document and ask for comments within one week. People will not give you comments within one week but this is usually the time you start calling people and tell them to get their comments in within 24 hrs or you contact their management. They will give you comments after this and you will resolve them and facilitate conversation between different people.

In my current experience within a biomedical instrumentation company, the design review process was a pretty open and inclusive process in respects to suggestions to improve the product. A little over a week beforehand, a series of documents was sent out to all managers, supervisors, and critical personal within the company asking for suggested changes. Once this occurred, the supervisors would hold a meeting with their respective staff to get their input as well. This was determined to be important because it was the staff, technicians, and projection workers that actually came in most contact with the instruments and therefore had valuable suggestions. The managers/ supervisors then represented their staff’s suggestions during the design meeting. In this way, everyone in the company had a voice; every suggestion was valued. As for the meeting, there was the standard moderator and scribe which went over the documents/changes and wrote down the meeting minutes respectively. As the changes were proposed, questions were freely offered and answered to the best of the ability of the project team and valuable suggestions/ concerns were specially noted down for further review by the engineering teams. Those questions would then inspire design changes or explanations; both of which would be shared with all supervisors/ managers to further pass down to all employees. In this way, everyone was kept informed and everyone’s opinion was valued.

I've had the experience to sit in on a design review meeting and what I noticed was the culture was not as strict as I thought. There was a moderator who was basically the person that called the meeting together. He made sure every detail was given a chance to be talked about. The documents had to be reviewed prior to the meeting by the reviewers to save time. The thing you said about being forced to stay silent is not what I experienced. The team that wrote the document were given a chance to speak about why they did what they did. In my opinion this makes sense because they're the ones who designed the document/device. But, once everyone had a chance to make a comment, the comments were generally taken as an improvement to the product rather than criticism - which is always a good thing. The designers were given the opportunity to ask any questions or clarifications at the end. The goal of these meetings is to ensure that all the products and documents are created effectively and any faults or errors are fixed.

The only design review meeting I have been present in was conducted by the leader who would be moving from point to point in the agenda. The other members would be adding important comments and/or questions to whatever points were brought in the agenda. As Hiren mentioned in one of the points mentioned before, the meeting was not as strict as you would first think. I felt like the environment was one where the team knew each other for too long, they would laugh and get work done at the same time, they would add comments to the work done by others in order to improve the quality work. Something interesting they mentioned was the following: A design would normally be sent 1 week or 4 days before the meeting was held. However, there was some very intense days of work where this would not happened and the design would be sent with less time than that.
Let me know what you think.

Sincerely,
Roberto Pineda.

Like a few of our classmates mentioned, design reviews are typically more relaxed. I had the opportunity to sit in on a few design reviews during my time as an intern. In most cases the suggested changes had already been given to the managers beforehand and the requested changes made. This is not to say that there were no additional changes, but that a majority of critical changes had already been made. The review is then more of a formality and a second chance for any previously missed changes. These are typically prepared a week or two in advance with all documentation and Change Order form ready to route. Once approved these are routed through documentation control and various departments for sign off.

I have never personally done a design change from an initial design standpoint, but I have made Engineering Change Orders on documentations post the design change. Essentially these change orders have to be approved by R&D, Quality, and the effected area. Prior to initiating the change order, I would set a meeting with these team groups and address what the change is and how the impact will effect the corresponding teams, and potentially training the applicable people if it is a process change.

I've only been part of an "unofficial" design review meeting, but from what some of my classmates have told me it's quite similar to what they experience. Everyone was emailed the document in review (in this case a DSD) a week prior and was expected to have at least 3 notes to bring up about the document. One person was randomly chosen to be the moderator, and a few others were designated to be the readers who would take turns reading the entire document. The moderator stopped the reader after each specification to ask if anyone had any comments to make, and it didn't feel like there was any pressure to not voice your opinion. It did take a while to get through it all though.

I don't have any med-tech industry experience but I imagine the design review experience being tense for the product developing team. Passing a design review means completing a major milestone in the project development process and shows that the product is ready to be launched therefore it can be distressful for any engineer/developer. The environment of the meeting can vary depending on your experience in the company and with similar projects, the design review board might be more critical and scrutinous of a project with team members new to the company or new to the type of project but would be more understanding towards mistakes while seasoned employees may be given some slack but mistakes might be treated harshly. It can also vary depending on your popularity, if you are generally well-liked or the company wants to see you succeed the may be more nurturing and forgiving of mistakes, if you are not popular there may be ill intent during the review. It can also very with your professionalism and readiness during the review (this you can definitely control). It can also vary with how dynamic/creative versus traditional the company will be. There are a lot of variable that can dictate the design review meeting culture.

Working in manufactoring, especially with new automation technology, it is interesting to see the culture of how things changed to improve. For one, it is all done online mostly since the main engineers and programmers are based out of either Montreal or Massachusetts working together with our New Jersey location. While I do not have a direct say in the matter, feedback from all of the team members is important. Any well thought out observation or suggestion is taken into careful consideration and is implemented to the best of the company's ability if it is a good idea. For bigger, on site changes to the equipment, feedback is also very valuable but it may take months to implement because that in itself becomes a project.

The design review meetings were held with the head of the departments and each of the changes were reviewed and if anyone had any input to what else should be added or if any other changes should be made. These were very short meetings at my internship since it is a small company and not many people come into the office.

Design review meetings at our company are very big in the sense that various members of several departments are invited. There, the project lead discusses the progress and changes in the device and asks for recommendations or is given feedback from other personnel. Meeting minutes are noted with actions established shortly after the meeting. It is usually difficult to schedule such meetings because of the type of personnel required at these meetings. These meetings can span from 1hr to 3hrs depending on the scope of the meeting and schedules of each individual. Personally, we listen to the higher management and project leads discuss however we also are asked questions on validations or verification results if needed.

At my company, design reviews are not as restricting as the capstone design review session. No one is forced to be silent while their project is being evaluated. There's more of a dialogue between the team and the one who is evaluating the project idea. We've had design review sessions with different department managers such as the marketing and quality managers and even the VP of R&D so that we get perspectives from other angles apart from our own. Generally, the environment is very respectful and a lot of times quite engaging because the team makes a good effort to captivate whoever the project idea is being presented to and try to cover all gray areas so that they are not pointed out to us by someone else.