Concurrent Engineering
Vukica Jovanovic, M.S.
School of Technology
Mechanical Engineering Technology
Considering the Alternatives
A simple fork end for Pneumatic Piston
Machine Welded Extrusion or
from
Casting StockChannel Metal
Sheet
Solid Assembly
Injection
Mold
x3
$95 $75 $55 $25 $1.20 $0.30
Piece-part costs
$10 $100 $400 $8 $5,000 $60,000
Tooling costs
Production Volume: Recurring Costs versus Non-Recurring Costs
Dr. Mike L. Philpott, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Simultaneous Engineering
• Term “simultaneous engineering” has being used since
the decade of the 1990s.
• The product development has different phases.
• Those phases can be studied separately, but in order to
achieve better results in a company, they should be
developed simultaneously as much as possible.
Conventional Product Design Approach
Partial processes
Product
Idea Manufacturing Assembly Maintenance
Design
overall time
Concurrent Product Design Approach
Product Manufacturing
Shorter total
Design time to market
Assembly
Idea
Maintenance
Better collaboration Function
between overlap
different phases
Concurrent Product Design Approach
• How much overlap is good?
• How many products and prototypes is enough?
• When to draw the line of doing things too concurrently?
Digital Planning Between Different Phases
I Idea II Design
IV Production III Planning
- TATA technologies, iKnowledge Solutions company.
Simultaneous Engineering
• Has to be supported by top management.
• All product development team members should be
dedicated for the application of this strategy.
• Each phase in product development has to be carefully
planned before actual application.
• New product’s lifecycle has to fit in in the existing
product program lifecycles in a company.
Problems in a Product Design
• The goal is to develop a product that will be designed
and manufactured with collaboration of engineers from
various company department.
• In this way, some problems in design, manufacturability
etc. can be spotted early in the design phase.
• It is more difficult to implement a change when product is
in manufacturing phase than in a planning phase.
Simultaneous Engineering
• Has to be supported by top management.
• All product development team members should be
dedicated for the application of this strategy.
• Each phase in product development has to be carefully
planned before actual application.
• New product’s lifecycle has to fit in in the existing
product program lifecycles in a company.
from the Book: Ribbens, J., Simultaneous Engineering for New Product Development:
Manufacturing Applications, John Wiley& Sons, INC, NY, U.S., 2000.
Various product life cycles
Sales
Product A A Time
Product B
Product C
Product D
Product Development Process
• It has major impact at cost, quality and overall time.
• Quality depends of a design, it is built in to it.
• Cost and time needed for production depend on a
factors related to a product design:
– Is it easy to made
– Is it easy to assemble
US vs. Japanese Patterns of Design Changes
U.S.
Japan Design
Design Changes
Changes
Projects Start Japan U.S.
U.S. & Japan Production Production
Fleisher, M., Liker, J.K., Concurrent Engineering Effectiveness: Integrating Product
Development Across Organizations, Hanser Gardner Publications, 1997, 4.
US vs. Japanese Patterns of Design Changes
• Japanese automakers focused more time on
making design revisions
– early on in the prototype stage
– so the bugs were worked out by the start of the production.
• U.S. invested:
– less time in exploring alternatives early in the cycle and
– thus major changes just before the production,
– continuing making costly engineering changes after start of a
production, and
– overall cycle was slower and more costly.
Fleisher, M., Liker, J.K., Concurrent Engineering Effectiveness: Integrating Product
Development Across Organizations, Hanser Gardner Publications, 1997, 5.
Tolerances
• Overall product costs depends of the tolerances.
• Tolerances of the parts are combined in assembly and
they together form general deviation from a nominal
value and projected solution.
• Tolerances are not just manufacturing issue, they are
also design issue.
Design and Manufacturability
• It is hard to manufacture an automotive body which has
the same shape as designed.
• Japanese car manufacturers were adjusting product
design model to a produced model.
• They have implemented changes to other related part
according to characteristics of a produced part.
Concurrent Engineering
• CE means that there is 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.
• It is not just a link between design and engineering.
• Industrial design (aesthetic) should work concurrently
with manufacturing .
• Sales strategies, mechanisms for delivering service after
sale, methods of the disposal should be also concurrent
with design and manufacturing.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to acknowledge the support from the
Society for Manufacturing Engineers - Education
Foundation, SME-EF Grant #5004 for “Curriculum Modules
in Product Lifecycle Management.”
