Order your sheet metal fabrication online. Immediate pricing and short lead times all over the UK. The manufacturing and engineering landscape can be pretty competitive. New methods from lean manufacturing to various product design principles are created to gain a slight edge over competitors. Concurrent engineering is another such example which, like lean manufacturing , derives from Japan.
The biggest difference of the two from the origination stand-point is that concurrent engineering was developed solely through engineering practice rather than theoretic ideas. The concept itself is a few decades old but improvements are being added all the time to raise the efficiency. Concurrent engineering or simultaneous engineering is a discipline of integrated product development whereby all the life cycle aspects of a single product are considered simultaneously right from the start.
Even at the conceptual phase, engineers are already working on solving everything possible that comes after the product launch. In concurrent engineering, the various stages in product design from conception to after-sales support are approached and analysed, discussed and optimised at the initial stage to prevent undue wastage of time, effort, and money in the long run. This systematic approach dictates that only after finishing one stage, the product would be sent to the next stage.
The sequential engineering method is also easy to track. Bottlenecks and underperformers can be easily picked out and rectified. A highly complex product line was made simple, fast, and efficient. But issues always arise. If one of the departments makes a mistake in their assigned task, the product would be sent back over the wall for rectification. Over time, as products became more and more complex, some of these walls came down naturally due to necessity. More collaboration in product development became imperative to avoid errors that could prove expensive if allowed to occur.
Gradually, as the benefits of this new method became more apparent, smart companies started actively pursuing ways to develop it. Overall, concurrent engineering can be divided into three main elements: people, process and technology.
People form the backbone of any organisation. Choosing the right design team at the initial stages of product design concept generation is of paramount importance. The product development in concurrent engineering necessitates that plenary meetings be held of people from different job functions.
The multidisciplinary team meetings are necessary to reduce development time and improve overall product quality. The right team will have a certain set of qualities that promote co-operation, sharing and trust.
Information and feedback sharing by employees must be a regular part of all meetings. Any changes in design or tolerance limits must be conveyed to all concerned departments at the earliest. The people have to be open to criticism and quick changes. Bringing in different departments at an early stage means that ideas that are knowingly not ripe for production are open for everyone to comment and make suggestions on. The process is the most important element in concurrent engineering. It defines the different product development stages that must be achieved in order to reach the end goal.
Each stage is then further divided and optimised. As every product and organisation is different, the general philosophy of concurrent engineering must be moulded to fit the project at hand.
Even the most qualified design team will become ineffective and confused if a well-defined process is not put in place. The process refers to the group of different methods used to reach the common goal of the organisation. The different processes should be capable of functioning in sync so that relevant job functions can keep each other updated about developments and discuss problems should any arise. As concurrent engineering requires much more communication and collaboration than the traditional methods, new technologies are necessary to enable and encourage information sharing.
There are many amazing technologies available that promote collaboration and instant information sharing. Any changes requested by a department will be notified to other pertinent departments. The project and problem-solving methods and the technologies utilized make up the essential elements through which parallelism in new product design and development can be achieved. Following is a discussion of how each of these elements contributes to concurrent engineering implementation.
Project methods based on team-work, milestone management, and target-oriented work definition and follow-up are paramount. These methods also must be supported by appropriate senior management commitment and incentive systems. Each team is granted a large degree of autonomy to solve design problems where and when they occur, without much hierarchical intervention.
However management must ensure that the transfer of information between different activities or tasks is smooth and transparent. Also, the means of experimentation must allow the experts involved to rule out differences in interpretation on the functional and technical design parameters. In other words, for concurrent engineering to be successful, information and interpretation asymmetries between the experts involved must be avoided whenever possible. During design and development projects, methods are utilized that foster and support smooth interdisciplinary problem definition and problem solving.
Methodologies such as brainstorming open the boundaries of the team to allow for wider ranges of alternative design definitions and solutions to be considered. The use of methodologies like Quality Function Deployment QFD further aids experts from different disciplinary backgrounds to jointly define a product's functional and technical requirements. Activity flow chart methods such as IDEF3 allow for detailed planning and monitoring of the different parallel and overlapping activities involved in project execution.
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis FMEA allows for a systematic investigation of the occurrence and impact of possible flaws in the new product design. These are just a few of the many supportive methods that can be used in a concurrent engineering environment. The sources listed at the end of this essay provide more detailed and exhaustive overviews on these and other methodologies supporting concurrent engineering.
In concurrent engineering, design technologies are utilized that foster efficient cross-disciplinary analysis, experimentation, and representation of new product designs. Some examples of these technologies include: three-dimensional 3-D computer-aided design CAD systems, rapid prototyping techniques, rapid tooling and rapid testing techniques, as well as techniques that enable the representation of product designs in a virtual context. These design technologies are important because of the key information they convey: their 3-D character allows the expert to interpret design features in a more effective and efficient way.
All of these technologies contribute to the reduction of interpretation asymmetries between the experts involved, as well as to fast-cycle design and development, because they allow for high-speed iterations of analysis and experimentation on both concepts and models of the product.
Thus, they modify traditional project management approaches by allowing for more systematic and flexible experimentation and iteration to be included throughout the project's design and development process. In fact, the time and cost incurred by the development and construction of prototypes generally are reduced by factors of 2 to 5 when using digital e.
These tools have become an important enabling factor in the concurrent engineering environment. Without their implementation and further upgrading, concurrent engineering might never be able to realize its full potential in terms of design cost and lead-time optimization.
This brief overview has provided a summary of the why, what, and how involved in implementing a concurrent engineering philosophy for the development of new products, services, and processes.
It has outlined how introducing overlap during the execution of innovation project tasks and activities has become vital because of competitive pressures that force new product developers to be more time-conscious. However, a final caveat is warranted. Although concurrent engineering is an important method for handling the time pressures that occur during new product development, rushing products to the market can sometimes be a mistake.
First, markets need time to develop. Numerous examples exist where a new product was too early for the market to absorb it or where product variety has reached limits beyond which the product choice decision becomes too complicated for customers.
Second, more revolutionary new product development, which often is based on significant technological advances, typically requires longer time horizons to reach completion. Putting too much emphasis on time compression may blind an organization to this basic fact. Third, the conceptual development of new product ideas requires time or "slack. Therefore, both managers and new product developers need to find a balance between the paradoxical needs for speed and slack in their organizations. It decreases product development time and also the time to market, leading to improved productivity and reduced costs.
Concurrent Engineering is a long term business strategy, with long term benefits to business. Though initial implementation can be challenging, the competitive advantage means it is beneficial in the long term. It removes the need to have multiple design reworks, by creating an environment for designing a product right the first time round. The notable business benefits of concurrent engineering make it a compelling strategy to adopt.
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