Assignment 1: Concurrent Engineering

INTRODUCTION

“Concurrent Engineering is a traditional design practices are primarily serial or sequential: Each step in the process is completed in order or sequence only after the previous steps have been completed. The implementation of the design occurs after a prototype or model is created from engineering drawings. A machinist working from the engineering drawings generated by a drafter, or an engineer, makes the prototype. Only after creating a prototype of the design would the engineer discover that a hole was too small, parts didn't mate properly, or a handgrip was misplaced. The part would have to be redesigned and the process completed until a satisfactory solution was reached.” (Khandani, 2005)

The term of Concurrent Engineering can be defined as a tight link between all participants in the product development process, such that they can perform much of their work at about the same time (Vukica Jovanovic, ). As a research done by Vukica Jovanovic, stated that concurrent engineering is not just a link between design and engineering. Industrial design (aesthetic) should work concurrently with manufacturing and for sales strategies, mechanisms for delivering service after sale; methods of the disposal should be also concurrent with design and manufacturing.

Another definition of concurrent engineering by Scanlan is the application of tools, techniques, methodologies, and behavioral initiatives used to minimise product development timescales by maximising the degree of overlap of design activities.

DEFINITION

Concurrent energy is a systematic approach to integrate product development that emphasizes the responses to customer expectation. It embodies team values of cooperation, trust and sharing in such a manner that decision making is by consesus, involvong all perspectives in parallel, from the beginning the product life cycle.

. This management approach is focusing on a simultaneous development of products and production processes, so that products can be effectively produced, and so that product development takes the strengths and limitations of the company's production processes into account during the design of the product.  

CE also can be defined as the application of tools, techniques, methodologies and behavioral initiatives which used to minimize product development timescales by maximizing the degree of overlap design activities. Figure below shows difference between concurrent design and other methods.

STAGES OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING AND THEIR PRIMARY CRITERIA

The following list identifies the phases of Concurrent Engineering and the goal for each as studied by Cline, 2000. After each goal is a set of bullet items that indicate the primary criteria that must be met for that phase to have accomplished its purpose. Violation of any of these criteria will result in damage to the quality process, and subsequent inadequacies to the project.

Stages	Description
Project Identification	Goal:  Ensure a single direction for corporate development to avoid shifting priorities, false project starts, and pre-empted project efforts. Provide a simple, clear process to start the project track. Get executive commitment and goal consistent with business objectives and corporate vision for project. Define a central point for approval, prioritization, and scheduling for all projects
Project Scope	Goal:  Estimate the project's effort, time, and cost so executives can make an informed decision about the project's worth. Confirm the expectations of the Customers and get consensus with them and the executive and corporate goals. Support the project's success by avoiding unrealizable date or budget constraints or unallocated resources.
Requirement and Analysis	Goal:  Build and validate a model of the business problem domain to ensure the correct problem is defined and customer needs are accurate before attempting a solution. Get requirements jointly with the user and write a specification that can be implemented, tested and explained. Provide traceability between the customer needs, system solution, and testing to enable change management. Justify project needs are best met by comparing purchase, build, or hybrid solutions (cost/benefit analysis of vendor proposals).
System Design	Goal:  Provide a technical solution that meets the customer needs and enhances the corporate business position and value. Design and validate a technical solution at the high level. Define metrics to predict time of implementation and development effort, and to be used later for process improvement. Build a test plan from the requirements, not the design or code.
Development Planning	Goal:  Define a work plan for implementing a technical solution, whether a purchased package, new development, maintenance change, or a hybrid. Collect work plans for testing, customer acceptance, development, and documentation, and ratify with all involved. Get written consensus on the project plan specification from all involved. Define a strong QA policy to ensure process compliance and product correctness. Establish configuration management for changes, defect resolution, and project control.
Construction	Goal:  Install or construct the solution, using a mini-release, risk-driven and priority-driven approach, to run concurrently with testing and low-level design. Validate low-level design, collecting interface specifics (e.g., screen and report layouts) from customers. Perform regression testing to maintain quality and avoid later rework. Track personnel effort, time, and defect rate to monitor project and set a baseline for calibrating the project team and process efficacy. Separate developers from any testing except unit testing and their contribution to system testing. Define a procedure by which QA and the customers approve the release, and not the development team.
Installation and Assessment	Goal:  Ensure a solid and methodical way of moving the product into the customers' environment as smoothly as possible. Emulate the production environment to test the final product for capacitance, stress, and performance. Examine growth potential and adjust accordingly. Access the project and process with the collected metrics to improve the process and calibrate the teams for future predictability.

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING

• Get a strong commitment to from senior management.
• Establish unified project goals and a clear business mission.
• Develop a detailed plan early in the process.
• Continually review your progress and revise your plan.
• Develop project leaders that have an overall vision of the project and goals.
• Analyze your market and know your customers.
• Suppress individualism and foster a team concept.
• Establish and cultivate cross-functional integration and collaboration.
• Transfer technology between individuals and departments.
• Break project into its natural phases.
• Develop metrics.
• Set milestones throughout the development process.
• Collectively work on all parts of project.
• Reduce costs and time to market.
• Complete tasks in parallel

CONCLUSION:

Concurrent engineering is a technique by which several teams within an organization work simultaneously to develop new products and services. By engaging in multiple aspects of development concurrently, the amount of time involved in getting a new product to the market is decreased significantly. In markets where customers value time compression, fast-cycle developers have a distinct advantage.

Instead of increasing the performance and being excited to reduce the design as well as development times, manager and engineer are advised to balance the implementation of organization. If the concurrent engineering been applied without a proper organization, it will create a chaos and unpleasant environment. 

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