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Concurrent Engineering — Its Procedures and Pitfalls

Industry has seen some major changes during the last twenty years or so. There has been a revolution in manufacturing techniques and methods and one operator now achieves the output of three or four. We have had a revolution in the management of quality, spearheaded by the Standard BS 5750 and its derivatives. Marketing has been the cause ofanother revolution, one that has required all concerned to pay the highest regard to the preferences of the customer and to be wary of the ability of invention to 'create its own demand'. Oddly, however, the management of the process whereby our new products and systems are designed has remained largely unchanged. There are exceptions of course but, in the main, this field remains a cobwebby area where practices are slow to improve. Change is in the wind however and ever more so as the relationship between the design of the product or system and its competitiveness in the market becomes increasingly apparent. One approach in this field that is now causing considerable interest is that of Concurrent Engineering. Originally conceived as a means of reducing the 'time to market' when developing new products, there is no fundamental reason why this technique should not be equally applicable to the development of systems and specifically to those involving instrumentation and control. For the benefit of any readers who may not yet have encountered concurrent engineering, developing a new product or system by sequential means involves passing the emerging concept from one department (or function) to another, i.e. from Research to Design, and thence to Development, Production Planning, Estimating, Tooling, Manufacture and Assembly. This 'over the wall' approach can be inefficient, time being wasted due to 'learning curves' or worse obstructive attitudes, e.g. 'not invented here!' Growing competition in terms of 'time to market' led to the thought that, if barriers between functions were less daunting, product or system development might be accelerated. That it might be possible to reduce timescales by overlapping the activities of sequential functions was an obvious conclusion. However, the thinking didn't stop there. What if barriers were removed altogether? Why not set up multidisciplinary teams in order to remove entirely the need to transfer information from function to function? If there is a single feature that characterizes concurrent engineering in its present form, it is the existence of such teams. They may be full-time or part-time, single-role or multi-role, co-located or dispersed, but the operation of such teams is by the practice of concurrent engineering can be recognised. There are now many industrial case histories to illustrate the benefits that can be derived. It is generally agreed that if a multi-disciplinary team is set up and given its head, time to market can be reduced dramatically reductions of 30, 50 and even 70% being reported. Many companies also report that teams working can lead to lower manufacturing costs (through better product design) and to improved product quality. Other benefits include and unexpectedly high motivation of the staff involved and increased awareness by such staff of the value of the contributions made by their colleagues. As one might expect all this has led to considerable professional interest. Conferences have been held, articles have been written and interest groups have been set up. Some independent consultants now advocate the approach that concurrent engineering should be used on all occasions for developing all products. Is such an approachjustified? Well maybe. That concurrent engineering can bring substantial benefits is now beyond doubt, but whether it should be applied universally is another matter. Let's consider some of the issues involved.