I haven't experienced a design review in industry, but as previously stated in another forum, we did design reviews for Capstone. My experience was very similar to Talha; each group had their documents by a group of their peers and then any errors or unclear information was brought up during the design review. There was a moderator to keep the organization and call on students to hear there comments and a scribe to document every comment. During the design review each group was told to stay completely silent unless a question was directed toward them; it reduced the chances of arguments and allowed a calm and professional environment.

Within the company I work for, although I am not directly involved within the design review meetings, I have spoken to a couple R&D engineers who partake in these meetings. They describe the culture as stressful. The meetings generally are always of high priority to get a design submitted to the proto-type shop in order to test it within the design labs. The meetings generally are rather straight forward without much joking around and every design is challenged regardless the level of engineer presenting it. In some ways it is good to have your design challenged from multiple viewpoints because it will ultimately be better for the design in the long run. However, I was told that within design review meetings the engineers need to possess a certain degree of grit otherwise their design will be completely blown off and pushed to the side.

At my current company, the design review meetings are overall pretty calm as we work together on establishing any potential changes based on feedback or simulation data. Sometimes the meetings involve having a conference call with the potential vendor to allow them to give feedback based on their capabilities and experience. There will be agreements and disagreements during these meetings, but overall everyone was respectful of each other’s opinions and suggestions whether it was good or not. It never really got heated with arguments being thrown around blasting people’s ideas. On the last project I was part of, there was a design meeting, sometimes with the vendor, every week discussing on things are progressing with the project. Are there any changes needed, any new issues that have shown up, etc. Before each meeting we all had a checklist of the discussion topics that had to be covered during the meeting.

In my experience, at design review meetings, everyone attending the meeting reads the document beforehand. The meeting starts by everyone saying their initials one by one and how long it took them to review the document. The people who wrote the document attend the review but cannot make commentary unless asked by the group. A reader reads line by line in which the moderator asks if there are any comments after each requirement. The scribe writes down the comment and the initials of the person who made the comment so if clarification is needed afterwards the team knows who to ask. There is no back and forth dialogue or discussion. Therefore, comments can be given and recorded that the whole group does not agree with. Does anyone think that thare may be advantages to allowing open discussion in this case? What are the disadvantages?

I work at a non-profit hospital so for our more robust medical devices that we are unable to develop in-house, we use outside contractors to develop the devices. So the company will come and meet with surgeon that invented the device and work closely with the surgeon to understand the problem its solving and how best to improve the original prototype. Usually for medical devices coming out the surgery department, this even involves the contracted engineers viewing an actually surgery to see the current medical instruments the surgeon is using and how he/she uses it during surgery. It's actually a pretty fascinating process because the surgeon earlier on thinks he/she knows what they want and the engineers come in and have a different perspective and can provide creative solutions the surgeons didn't initially consider. The company will usually come up with 6-10 different designs and we will pick one to move forward with to build a functional prototype. During the development, they will require the surgeon's input to make sure it's in line with the capabilities the surgeon will require to perform the surgery and not only the look but the feel so the type of material/size etc. All key stakeholders are included in the Design Review. For this particular example this would include at MSK; MSK inventor, contracted company (business people and engineers), MSK engineers, MSK business stakeholders (me).

In my company the design reviews were pretty standard as discussed numerous times above. However the only point I would like to add that hasn't been discussed is that I believe typing all of the changes during these meetings is the most efficient way. Some companies, or in capstone we are reviewing all of the documents before class and the scribe will write down all of the comments. I think a google drive or sharepoint should be used instead, so there is one document with all of the comments on it. Perhaps the design review meetings could also be eliminated by just using this online collaborative version.

I don’t have any experience working in the industry, so when I imagine the meeting I picture something like kindergarten and theres a talking stick. I think it should go around, but before its passed to the next group, the team in question should get a chance to respond (Or at least given their change to defend)
Overall, the project team in question should not have to stay silent, but do there best not to interrupt. If there is a general misunderstanding it would be best to let to them step forward and clarify as others might have the same inquiry. If a new idea or modification is pitched, the project team should be able to come back with “i like that idea” or “we thought of that, and/but….” or even “we don’t like that / can’t do that because….”
It seems that most of my colleagues above me also share the open or at least organized culture. However I can see the benefit of having them stay quite. This will ensure no arguments break out, should things get “heated”, though I can’t see that happening. This also gives the team in question the time to process everything and make adjustments to the criticism they received before attending the next meeting.

I remember during my internship, I had an opportunity to sit down in a design review meeting. All the head department members were at the meeting. These meeting were taken very seriously and it was mandatory for all member to attend. As the meeting progressed, they discussed certain small changes that were recommended. This was a fairly quick meeting that lasted over an hour. The heads of the meeting seemed very opened, and were willing to listen to anyone who had input at the time.