Faculty
Steven Eppinger is Professor of Management Science and Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management where he holds the General Motors Leaders for Global Operations Chair.
Eppinger teaches interdisciplinary courses online and on campus at both the Master's and executive levels in product design and innovation, engineering project management, and product management. Notably, he has created an interdisciplinary product development course in which graduate students from engineering, management, and industrial design programs collaborate to develop new products.
He is coauthor of the textbook Product Design and Development (McGraw-Hill). Now in its seventh edition, the text has been translated into several languages and used by hundreds of universities and hundreds of thousands of students.
Eppinger's research is applied to improving complex technical project management. Recent work has focused on application of agile software development methods to a range of other industries. Prior research is the basis of the book titled Design Structure Matrix Methods and Applications (MIT Press). His research contributes to fields ranging from project management and systems engineering to product development and product management. He is one of the most widely cited scholars in the engineering design and technical management disciplines.
Eppinger has served as Deputy Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management and has chaired many of MIT’s interdisciplinary masters degree programs (System Design and Management - SDM, Integrated Design and Management - IDM, Leaders for Global Operations - LGO, and Leaders for Manufacturing - LFM). He has also held a joint appointment at MIT in the Engineering Systems Division and was codirector of the Center for Innovation in Product Development.
He received SB, SM, and ScD degrees from MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering before joining the MIT faculty in 1988. He has received many awards and honors including MIT's Graduate Student Council Teaching Award, the MIT Sloan School's Award for Innovation and Excellence in Management Education, ASME Best Paper Award in Design Theory and Methodology (twice), INFORMS Technology, Innovation Management, and Entrepreneurship Distinguished Speaker Award, PICMET Medal of Excellence Award, Wickham Skinner Best Paper Award, and POMS College of Product Innovation and Technology Management Distinguished Fellow Award.
Featured Publication
Product Design and Development, 7th Edition.Ulrich, Karl, Steven D. Eppinger, and Maria C. Yang. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education, 2020.
Featured Publication
Design Structure Matrix Methods and Applications.Eppinger, Steven D. and Tyson R. Browning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.
Jake Farlon Drutchas and Steven Eppinger. In Proceedings of the Design Society, Volume 3: ICED23, Cambridge, UK: July 2023. Download Paper.
Jake Drutchas and Steven D. Eppinger. In Proceedings of the Design Society, May 2022.
Nithin Narayanan, Nitin Joglekar, and Steven D. Eppinger. In Proceedings of the 23rd International DSM Conference, edited by Harold Stowe, Jakob Trauer, Steven D. Eppinger, and Tyson R. Browning. Montreal, Canada: October 2021.
Harold Stowe, Tyson R. Browning, Steven D. Eppinger, and Jakob Trauer. In DS 103: Proceedings of the 22nd International DSM Conference (DSM 2020), Cambridge, MA: October 2020. Download Paper.
Curiosity and creativity spur innovation. To build these skills companywide, emphasize questions over answers and create space for exploration.
Words and ideas that stood out this year.
"One of the key principles of brainstorming is to suspend judgment."
One of the program’s goals, says Eppinger … , is to showcase interdependence of all areas of business, design, and technology.
This project management training program enables participants to reduce the complexity involved in large projects by restructuring development and management procedures in ways that produces small-team results. MIT’s innovative solution, based on the design structure matrix (DSM), is devised to streamline complex projects by developing detailed models to understand the intricate interactions and iterative nature of design. The program also discusses modern agile development methods and their application in complex technical projects.
This business process improvement course introduces a structured approach to design and customer analysis processes that draws on important trends that have become essential to successful innovation in today’s businesses: the digitization of all business processes; the blending of product and service into integrated solutions; considerations around environmental sustainability; and the use of globally-distributed teams.
