Concurrent Engineering

Concurrent engineering which is sometimes called Simultaneous Engineering or Integrated Product Development (IPD). It was defined by the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) in its December 1988 report 'The Role of Concurrent Engineering in Weapons System Acquisition' as a systematic approach to the integrated, concurrent design of products and their related processes, including manufacture and support. It refers to an approach used in product development in which functions of design engineering, manufacturing engineering and other functions are integrated to reduce the elapsed time required to bring a new product to the market. This approach is intended to cause the developers, from the outset, to consider all elements of the product life cycle from conception through disposal, including quality, cost, schedule, and user requirements. 

The basic premise for concurrent engineering revolves around two concepts. The first is the idea that all elements of a product’s life-cycle, from functionality, producibility, assembly, testability, maintenance issues, environmental impact and finally disposal and recycling, should be taken into careful consideration in the early design phases.

The second concept is that the preceding design activities should all be occurring at the same time, i.e., concurrently. The idea is that the concurrent nature of these processes significantly increases productivity and product quality. This way, errors and redesigns can be discovered early in the design process when the project is still flexible. By locating and fixing these issues early, the design team can avoid what often become costly errors as the project moves to more complicated computational models and eventually into the actual manufacturing of hardware.

As mentioned above, part of the design process is to ensure that the entire product's life cycle is taken into consideration. This includes establishing user requirements, propagating early conceptual designs, running computational models, creating physical prototypes and eventually manufacturing the product. Included in the process is taking into full account funding, work force capability and time. A study in 2006 claimed that a correct implementation of the concurrent design process can save a significant amount of money, and that organizations have been moving to concurrent design for this reason.

Concurrent engineering replaces the more traditional sequential design flow, or ‘Waterfall Model’. In Concurrent engineering an iterative or integrated development method is used instead. The difference between these two methods is that the ‘Waterfall’ method moves in a linear fashion by starting with user requirements and sequentially moving forward to design, implementation and additional steps until you have a finished product. In this design system, a design team would not look backwards or forwards from the step it is on to fix possible problems. In the case that something does go wrong, the design usually must be scrapped or heavily altered. On the other hand, the iterative design process is more cyclic in that, all aspects of the life cycle of the product are taken into account, allowing for a more evolutionary approach to design. The difference between the two design processes can be seen graphically in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Traditional “Waterfall” or Sequential Development Method vs. Iterative Development Method in concurrent engineering.

A significant part of the concurrent design method is that the individual engineer is given much more say in the overall design process due to the collaborative nature of concurrent engineering. Giving the designer ownership is claimed to improve the productivity of the employee and quality of the product that is being produced, based on the assumption that people who are given a sense of gratification and ownership over their work tend to work harder and design a more robust product, as opposed to an employee that is assigned a task with little say in the general process.

Concurrent Engineering is not a quick fix for a company's problems and it's not just a way to improve Engineering performance. It's a business strategy that addresses important company resources. The major objective this business strategy aims to achieve is improved product development performance. Concurrent Engineering is a long-term strategy, and it should be considered only by organizations willing to make up front investments and then wait several years for long-term benefits. It involves major organizational and cultural change. 

The problems with product development performance that Concurrent Engineering aims to overcome are those of the traditional serial product development process in which people from different departments work one after the other on successive phases of development. 

In traditional serial development, the product is first completely defined by the design engineering department, after which the manufacturing process is defined by the manufacturing engineering department, etc. Usually this is a slow, costly and low-quality approach, leading to a lot of engineering changes, production problems, product introduction delays, and a product that is less competitive than desired. 

Concurrent Engineering brings together multidisciplinary teams, in which product developers from different functions work together and in parallel from the start of a project with the intention of getting things right as quickly as possible, and as early as possible. A cross-functional team might contain representatives of different functions such as systems engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, systems producibility, fabrication producibility, quality, reliability and maintainability, testability, manufacturing, drafting and layout, and program management. 

Sometimes, only design engineers and manufacturing engineers are involved in Concurrent Engineering. In other cases, the cross-functional teams include representatives from purchasing, marketing, production, quality assurance, the field and other functional groups. Sometimes customers and suppliers are also included in the team. 

In the Concurrent Engineering approach to development, input is obtained from as many functional areas as possible before the specifications are finalized. This results in the product development team clearly understanding what the product requires in terms of mission performance, environmental conditions during operation, budget, and scheduling. 

Multidisciplinary groups acting together early in the workflow can take informed and agreed decisions relating to product, process, cost and quality issues. They can make trade-offs between design features, part manufacturability, assembly requirements, material needs, reliability issues, serviceability requirements, and cost and time constraints. Differences are more easily reconciled early in design. 

Getting the design correct at the start of the development process will reduce downstream difficulties in the workflow. The need for expensive engineering changes later in the cycle will be reduced. Concurrent Engineering aims to reduce the number of redesigns, especially those resulting from post-design input from support groups. By involving these groups in the initial design, less iteration will be needed. The major iterations that do occur will occur before the design becomes final. The overall time taken to design and manufacture a new product can be substantially reduced if the two activities are carried out together rather than in series. The reductions in design cycle time that result from Concurrent Engineering invariably reduce total product cost. 

Concurrent Engineering provides benefits such as reduced product development time, reduced design rework, reduced product development cost and improved communications. Examples from companies using Concurrent Engineering techniques show significant increases in overall quality, 30-40% reduction in project times and costs, and 60-80% reductions in design changes after release. 

The implementation of Concurrent Engineering addresses three main areas: people, process, and technology. It involves major organizational changes because it requires the integration of people, business methods, and technology and is dependent on cross-functional working and teamwork rather than the traditional hierarchical organization. One of the primary people issues is the formation of teams. Collaboration rather than individual effort is standard, and shared information is the key to success. Team members must commit to working cross-functionally, be collaborative, and constantly think and learn. The role of the leader is to supply the basic foundation and support for change, rather than to tell the other team members what to do. Training addressed at getting people to work together in teams plays an important role in the successful implementation of Concurrent Engineering. 

An example of the use of Concurrent Engineering can be found in General Electric's Aircraft Engines Division's approach for the development of the engine for the new F/A-18E/F. It used several collocated, multi-functional design and development teams to merge the design and manufacturing process. The teams achieved 20% to 60% reductions in design and procurement cycle times during the full-scale component tests which preceded full engine testing. Problems surfaced earlier and were dealt with more efficiently than they would have been with the traditional development process. Cycle times in the design and fabrication of some components have dropped from an estimated 22 weeks to 3 weeks.

Another example concerns Boeing's Ballistic Systems Division where Concurrent Engineering was used in 1988 to develop a mobile launcher for the MX missile and was able to reduce design time by 40% and cost by 10% in building the prototype. 

Polaroid Corp.'s Captiva instant camera is also the result of a Concurrent Engineering approach, as a result of which Polaroid was able to make literally hundreds of working prototypes. Throughout the process, development was handled by cross-functional teams. 

Why concurrent engineering?

1. Increasing product variety and technical complexity that prolong the product developmentprocess and make it more difficult to predict the impact of design decisions on the functionality and performance of the final product.
2. Increasing global competitive pressure that results from the emerging concept of reengineering.
3. The need for rapid response to fast-changing consumer demand.
4. The need for shorter product life cycle.
5. Large organizations with several departments working on developing numerous products at the same time.
6. New and innovative technologies emerging at a very high rate, thus causing the new product to be technological obsolete within a short period.

Schemes for CE

CE is the application of a mixture of all following techniques to evaluate the total life-cycle cost

and quality.

• Axiomatic design
• Design for manufacturing guidelines
• Design science
• Design for assembly
• The Taguchi method for robust design
• Manufacturing process design rules
• Computer-aided DFM
• Group technology
• Failure-mode and effects analysis
• Value engineering
• Quality function deployment

Figure 1: Cost incurred and committed during the product life cycle

A characteristic curve representing cost incurred and committed during the product life cycle

• Summarized the results of a survey that include the following improvements to specific product lines by the applications of concurrent engineering.

1. Development and production lead times
2. Measurable quality improvements
3. Engineering process improvements
4. Cost reduction

Development and production lead times

• Product development time reduced up to 60%.
• Production spans reduced 10%.
• AT&T reduced the total process time for the ESS programmed digital switch by 46% in 3 years.
• Deere reduced product development time for construction equipment by60%.
• ITT reduced the design cycle for an electronic countermeasures system by33% and its transition-to-production time by 22%.

Measurable quality improvements

• Yield improvements of up to four times.
• Field failure rates reduced up to 83%.
• AT&T achieved a fourfold reduction in variability in a polysilicon deposition process for very large scale integrated circuits and achieved nearly two orders of magnitude reduction in surface defects.
• AT&T reduced defects in the ESS programmed digital switch up to 87% through a coordinated quality improvement program that included product and process design.
• Deere reduced the number of inspectors by two-thirds through emphasis on process control and linking the design and manufacturing processes.

Engineering process improvements

• Engineering changes per drawing reduced up to 15 times
• Early production engineering changes reduced by 15%.
• Inventory items stocked reduced up to 60%.
• Engineering prototype builds reduced up to three times.
• Scrap and rework reduced up to 87%.

Cost reduction

• McDonnell Douglas had a 60% reduction in life-cycle cost and 40% reduction in production cost on a short-range missile proposal.
• Boeing reduced a bid on a mobile missile launcher and realized costs 30 to 40% below the bid.
• IBM reduced direct costs in system assembly by 50%.
• ITT saved 25% in ferrite core bonding production costs

To be successful with Concurrent Engineering, companies should initially:

1. compare themselves to their best competitors (i.e. benchmark)
2. develop metrics
3. identify potential performance improvements and targets
4. develop a clear Vision of the future environment
5. get top management support
6. get cross-functional endorsement
7. develop a clear Strategy to attain the envisioned environment
8. get top management support
9. get cross-functional endorsement
10. develop a detailed implementation plan
11. get top management support
12. get cross-functional endorsement

Concurrent Engineering is a business strategy, not a quick fix. It will take many years to implement. If management doesn't have the time or budget to go through the above steps, then it is unlikely that Concurrent Engineering will be implemented. 

Problem regarding application of Concurrent Engineering:

• unwillingness to institutionalize Concurrent Engineering
• maintenance of traditional functional reward systems
• maintenance of traditional reporting lines
• no training in teamwork
• unrealistic schedules
• no changes in relationships with vendors
• a focus on computerization rather than process improvement

To make Concurrent Engineering a real success, all the necessary information concerning products, parts and processes, has to be available at the right time. A lot of partially-released information has to be exchanged under tightly controlled conditions. EDM/PDM enables Concurrent Engineering by allowing users, whether in small teams or enterprise-wide groups, to access, distribute, store, and retrieve information from a variety of sources. EDM/PDM systems give engineers and project managers’ access and release control over projects and drawings, as well the ability to track them. 

Making Concurrent Engineering a success is really a management issue. If management doesn't get it right then it's not going to matter much whether EDM/PDM is used or not. On the other hand, EDM/PDM can provide valuable support to a successful implementation of Concurrent Engineering.

Four Elements of Concurrent Engineering

1. Voice of customer (customer focus)
2. Multi-disciplinary teams (team work; focus on producibility and supportability)
3. Automated tools (automation, CAD/CAM integration; at product development stage, evolve "build-to" technical data package)
4. Process management (Evolve process, plan it and stabilize it in parallel, while the product is being developed)

Advantages of Concurrent Engineering

• Manufacturing Personnel are able to identify production capabilities and
• capacities.
• They have thus the opportunity to inform the design group about the
• suitability of certain materials on the flipsides the designer would know the
• suitability of certain designs in aiding in cost reduction and quality improvement in
• production/assembly process.
• Early opportunities for design or procurement of critical tooling, some of which
• might have long lead times.
• Early consideration of the Technical Feasibility of a particular design or a portion
• of a design. Again this can avoid serious problems during production.