Concurrent Engineering : Concepts, Implementation and Practice

BACKGROUND There is an increasing awareness that 'time to market' is the key competitive issue in the manufacturing industry today. The global markets are demanding products that are well designed, are of high quality and are at low prices with ever decreasing lead times. Hence manufacturers are forced to utilize the best methods of technology with efficient control and management accompanied by suitably enabling organizational structures. Concurrent engineering (CE) is widely seen to be the methodology that can help satisfy these strenuous demands and keep the profitability and viability of product developers, manufacturers and suppliers high. There have been many reported successes of CE in practice. Rover were able to launch Land Rover Discovery in 18 months as compared with 48-63 months for similar products in Europe. Because of its early introduction to the market it became the best selling product in its class. AT & T report part counts down to one ninth of their previous levels and quality one hundred times (in surface defects) for VLSI (very improvements of large scale integration) circuits as a result of using the CE approach. WHO SHOULD READ THIS TEXT? This book will aim to provide a sound basis for the very diverse subject known as concurrent engineering. Concurrent engineering is recognized by an increasingly large proportion of the manufacturing industry as a necessity in order to compete in today's markets. This recognition has created the demand for information, awareness and training in good concurrent engineering practice Front Matter....Pages i-xix Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Introduction to concurrent engineering....Pages 3-23 Concurrent engineering case studies: Lessons from Ford Motor Company Experience....Pages 25-48 Organizational and managerial issues....Pages 49-74 Design maturity....Pages 75-87 Front Matter....Pages 89-89 Quality function deployment: an overview....Pages 91-99 Design for manufacture....Pages 101-115 Design for assembly....Pages 117-136 Rapid prototyping processes of physical parts....Pages 137-149 Rapid prototyping of software and hybrid systems....Pages 151-159 Front Matter....Pages 161-161 Software tools for the product development process....Pages 163-184 The role of knowledge-based engineering systems in concurrent engineering....Pages 185-199 Software solutions for concurrent engineering II....Pages 201-220 Strategies for concurrent engineering and sources of further information....Pages 221-229 Back Matter....Pages 231-234