Study on SWOT Analysis and Effectiveness Forecast in Design Project

We studied design projects by clarifying factors for successes and risks to maximize their effectiveness, and by studying advance evaluation methods of the result by project implementation. Regarding the former, we based our study on SWOT analysis. About 250 questions were gathered from past R&D studies regarding project merits. After review by four study members, 170 questions were chosen by judging validity and changing language of questions without changing their intents or meanings. As questions were considered the same in their objects, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats except for orientation of evaluation, similar questions were combined/omitted, and particularly noted views were abstracted. As for strengths and weaknesses, there were 27 questions; three on human resources, seven on material resources, four on financial resources, two on time, seven on information, and four on other resources. As for opportunities and threats, there were one each on legal system and social situation, four on market environment, six on competitive environment, and two on related segments. We then examined two past design projects and one new project to confirm adequacy of these views. We successfully extracted various items of S, W, O and T, to thereby reach a conclusion that these views were adequate, and confirm validity of our study. Regarding the latter, we reviewed effects achieved by implementation of the design project based on the concept of stock type resources. From 41 types of viewpoints for SWOT analysis, 27 items were selected by paraphrasing the contents of 27 viewpoints related to strength and weakness, which were self-controllable to those in the positive direction achieved by the design projects. Two study members conducted 4-stage evaluation on the cause and effect relationship of these 27 items using DEMATEL Method. We found out that “support of the top management” related to human resources and “effective use of patents” related to material resources would promote effectiveness of a design project. On the other hand, we found that the final effects obtained through the design project were “risks avoidable” related to other resources, “business expansion (including market segments)” and “economicalness of products” related to material resources, and “enhanced economy (efficiency) in the project scope” related to financial resources. As discussed, we prepared SWOT analysis-related items and learned which items would achieve the final effectiveness and which are to be achieved with top priority.