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Concurrent Engineering: European Space Agency Concurrent Design Facility

Concurrent engineering is a method of designing and developing products where different stages run simultaneously rather than consecutively. This decreases product development time and time to market, improving productivity and reducing costs. Key elements include cross-functional teams from different areas working together, doing several design tasks concurrently to reduce time, and incrementally sharing information as it becomes available. Concurrent engineering replaces the traditional sequential "waterfall" model with an iterative process that takes the entire product lifecycle into account from the beginning. This allows for prompt design changes and a more evolutionary approach.

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45 views6 pages

Concurrent Engineering: European Space Agency Concurrent Design Facility

Concurrent engineering is a method of designing and developing products where different stages run simultaneously rather than consecutively. This decreases product development time and time to market, improving productivity and reducing costs. Key elements include cross-functional teams from different areas working together, doing several design tasks concurrently to reduce time, and incrementally sharing information as it becomes available. Concurrent engineering replaces the traditional sequential "waterfall" model with an iterative process that takes the entire product lifecycle into account from the beginning. This allows for prompt design changes and a more evolutionary approach.

Uploaded by

Taranjeet Singh
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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CONCURRENT

ENGINEERING
Concurrent engineering, also known as simultaneous engineering, is a
method of designing and developing products, in which the different stages
run simultaneously, rather than consecutively. 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.

A 2008 publication described concurrent engineering as a relatively new


design management system that has had the opportunity to mature in recent
years to become a well-defined systems approach towards optimizing design
and engineering cycles. Because of this, concurrent engineering has been
implemented in a number of companies, organizations, and universities, most
notably in the aerospace industry. Beginning in the early 1990s, CE was also
adapted for use in the information and content automation field, providing a
basis for organization and management of projects outside the physical
product development sector for which it was originally designed.
Organizations such as the European Space Agency's Concurrent Design
Facility make use of concurrent design to perform feasibility studies for future
missions.
The basic premise for concurrent engineering revolves around two concepts.
The first is the idea that all elements of a product's life-cyclefrom
functionality, production, assembly, testing, maintenance, environmental
impact, and finally disposal and recyclingshould be taken into careful
consideration in the early design phases.
The second concept is that design activities should all be occurring at the
same time, i.e., concurrently. The idea is that the concurrent nature of these
activities significantly increases productivity and product quality. This way,
errors and redesigns can be discovered early in the design process when the
project is still flexible. By locating and fixing these issues early, the design
team can avoid what often become costly errors as the project moves to more
complicated computational models and eventually into the actual
manufacturing of hardware.[5]
As mentioned above, part of the design process is to ensure that the
product's entire life cycle is taken into consideration. This includes
establishing user requirements, propagating early conceptual designs,
running computational models, creating physical prototypes, and eventually
manufacturing the product. Included in this process is taking into full account
funding, workforce capability, and time requirements. A 2006 study claimed
that a correct implementation of the concurrent design process can save a
significant amount of money, and that organizations have been moving to
concurrent design for this reason. It is also highly compatible with systems
thinking and green engineering.
Concurrent engineering replaces the more traditional sequential design flow,
or "Waterfall Model". In Concurrent Engineering an iterative or integrated
development method is used instead. The Waterfall method moves in a linear
fashion, starting with user requirements and sequentially moving forward to
design and implementation, until you have a finished product. In this design
system, a design team would not quickly look backward or forward from the
step it is on to fix or anticipate problems. In the case that something does go
wrong, the design usually must be scrapped or heavily altered. The
concurrent or iterative design process encourages prompt changes of tack,
so that all aspects of the life cycle of the product are taken into account,
allowing for a more evolutionary approach to design. The difference between
the two design processes can be seen graphically in the Figure.

Traditional "Waterfall" or Sequential Development Method vs. Iterative Development


Method in concurrent engineering.
WHY CONCURRENT
ENGINEERING ?
1) Increasing product variety and technical complexity that prolong the
product development process and make it more difficult to predict the impact
of design decisions on the functionality and performance of the final product.
2) Increasing global competitive pressure that results from the emerging
concept of reengineering.
3) The need for rapid response to fast-changing consumer demand.
4) The need for shorter product life cycle.
5) Large organizations with several departments working on developing
numerous products at the
same time.
6) New and innovative technologies emerging at a very high rate, thus
causing the new product to
be technological obsolete within a short period.

CHALLENGES
Concurrent design comes with a series of challenges, such as
implementation of early design reviews, dependency on efficient
communication between engineers and teams, software compatibility, and
opening up the design process. This design process usually requires that
computer models (computer aided design, finite element analysis) are
exchanged efficiently, something that can be difficult in practice. If such
issues are not addressed properly, concurrent design may not work
effectively.

It is important to note that although the nature of some project activities


project imposes a degree of linearitycompletion of software code, prototype
development and testing, for exampleorganizing and managing project
teams to facilitate concurrent design can still yield significant benefits that
come from the improved sharing of information.
Service providers exist that specialize in this field, not only training people
how to perform concurrent design effectively, but also providing the tools to
enhance the communication between the team members.

ELEMENTS
1) Cross-functional teams
Cross-functional teams include people from different area of the workplace
that are all involved in a particular process, including manufacturing,
hardware and software design, marketing, and so forth.

2) Concurrent product realization


Doing several things at once, such as designing various subsystems
simultaneously, is critical to reducing design time and is at the heart of
concurrent engineering.

3) Incremental information sharing


Incremental information sharing helps minimize the chance that concurrent
product realization will lead to surprises. "Incremental" meaning that as soon
as new information becomes available, it is shared and integrated into the
design. Cross-functional teams are important to the effective sharing of
information in a timely fashion.

4) Integrated project management


Integrated project management ensures that someone is responsible for the
entire project, and that responsibility is not abdicated once one aspect of the
work is done.
COMPARISON

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