Concurrent Engineering Wheels

by Biren Prasad

Abstract

This article describes a Concurrent Engineering (CE) wheel-set and explains the basic principles on which this very subject is founded. The Concurrent Engineering approach to product design and development has two major themes. The first theme is establishing a concurrent product and process organization. This is referred to herein as "process taxonomy"” The second theme is applying this process taxonomy (or methodology) to design and develop the total product system. This is referred to as integrated product development (IPD). Each theme is divided into several essential parts forming major arms of the so called concurrent engineering wheel-set [Prasad, 1996a].

The first theme called product and process organization (PPO) has nine arms. The second theme named integrated product development (IPD) has ten arms. The materials in these two CE themes are brought together to balance the interests of both the customers and the companies. The arms of the PPO theme are Life-cycle Management: Process Re-engineering, Cooperative Work-groups, System Engineering, Information Modeling, The Whole System, and Product Realization Taxonomy. The arms of the IPD theme are Total Value Management, CE Metrics and Measures, Concurrent Function Deployment, Product Development Methodology, Decision Support Systems, Intelligent Information System, Capturing Life-Cycle Values, Life-Cycle Mechanization, and IPD Deployment Methodology [Prasad, 1996b].

In the Concurrent Engineering (CE) system, each modification of the product realization represents a taxonomic relationship between specifications (inputs, requirements and constraints), outputs, and the concept it represents [ASME/NSF, 1996]. At the beginning of the design process, the specifications are generally in abstract forms. As more and more of the specifications are satisfied, the product begins to take shape (begins to transform into a physical form). To illustrate how a full CE system will work, and to show the inner-working of its elements, the author defines this CE system as a set of two synchronized wheels. The representation is analogous to a set of synchronized wheels on a bicycle. Figure 1 shows this CE wheel set.

1. CE Wheel Set

2. First CE Wheel: Integrated Product and Process Organization

• Manufacturing Competitiveness: The price of the product is dictated by world economy and not by a country's economy or a company’s market edge alone. Those companies that are global can quickly change to suit a changing world market place and position themselves to compete globally rather than locally. This arm outlines what is required to become a market leader and compete globally. Successful companies have been the ones who have gained a better focus on eliminating waste (which normally would slip into their products), by understanding what drives product and process costs and, how value can be added. They have focused on product and process delivery-system — how to transition process innovations into technical success and how to leverage the implementation know-how into big commercial success. Many have chosen to emphasize high-quality flexible or agile production in product delivery rather than high-theme (mass) production.

• Life-cycle Management: Today, most companies are under extreme pressure to develop products within time periods that are rapidly shrinking. As the market changes, so do the requirements. This complicates the management of continuously varying product specifications and the handling of ongoing changes within this shrinking time period. The ongoing success of an organization lies in its ability to: continue to evolve; quickly react to changing requirements; reinvent itself on a regular basis; and keep up with ever-changing technology and innovation. Many companies are stepping up the pace of new product introduction, and are constantly learning and embracing new ways of engineering products more accurately the first time, and more often thereafter. This arm outlines life-management techniques, such as change management and process improvement, to remain globally competitive.

• Process Re-engineering: The global marketplace of the 1990s has shown no sympathy to tradition. The reality is that if the products manufactured do not meet the market needs, demand declines and profits dwindle. Many companies are finding that true increases in productivity and efficiency begin with such factors as clean and efficient processes, good communication infrastructure, teamwork, and a constancy of shared vision and purpose. The challenge is simply not to crank up the speed of the machine so that its outputs (per unit of time) are increased or doubled, but to change the basic machinery or process that produces the outputs. To accomplish the latter goals, this arm describes several techniques to achieve competitive superiority such as benchmarking, CPI, organizational restructuring, renovation, process re-engineering, etc.

• CE Techniques: The changing market conditions and international competitiveness are making the time-to-market a fast shrinking target. Over the same period, the diversity and complexity of the products have increased multi-fold. Concurrency is the major force of Concurrent Engineering. Paralleling describes a “time overlap” of one or more work-groups, activities, tasks, etc. This arm describes seven CE principles to aim at: Parallel work-group; Parallel Product Decomposition; Concurrent Resource Scheduling; Concurrent Processing; Minimize Interfaces; Transparent Communication; and Quick Processing; This arm also describes the seven forces that influence the domain of CE as agents (reffered to here as 7Ts) namely: talents, tasks, teams, techniques, technology, time and tools.

• Cooperative Work-groups: It has been a challenge for the design and manufacturing engineers to work together as teams to improve quality while reducing costs, weight, and lead-time. A single person, or a team of people, is not enough to provide all the links between human knowledge and skills, logical organization, technology, and the set of 7Cs coordination attributes. A number of supporting teams are required, some either virtual or at least virtually collocated. For the waltz of CE synthesis to succeed, CE teams need clear choreography. This arm describes for the first time the four collaborative teams that are essential for managing a CE organization. Examples of collaborative features include capabilities of electronic meeting, such as message-posting and interactions through voice, text, graphics and pictures.

• System Engineering: Most groups diligently work to optimize their subsystems, but due to a lack of incentives they tend to work independently of each other. This results in a product which is often sub-optimized at each decomposed level. System engineering requires that product realization is viewed as a "system-centered" problem, as opposed to "component-centered." Systems Engineering does not disagree with the idea of compartments or divisions of works, but it emphasizes that the interface requirements between the divisions (inter-divisional) and across the level should be adequately covered. That way, when the time comes to modernize other components of the system, one has the assurance that previously introduced technologies and processes will work logically in a fully-integrated fashion, thereby increasing net efficiency and profitability.

• Information Modeling: A successful integrated product development (IPD) requires a sufficient understanding of the product and process behaviors. One way to achieve this understanding is to use a series of reliable information models for planning, designing, optimizing and controlling each unit of the IPD process. The demands go beyond the 3-D CAD geometric modeling. The demands require schemes that can model all phases of a product’s life-cycle from cradle to grave. The different aspects of product design (planning, feasibility, design, process-planning), process design (process-execution, production, manufacturing, product support), the human behavior in teamwork, and the organization or environment in which it will operate, all have to be taken into account. Five major classes of modeling schemata are defined:

1. Product representation schemes and tools for capturing and describing the development process and design of various interfaces, such as design-manufacturing interface;

2. Schemes for modeling physical processes, including simulation, as well as of of models useful for product assessments, such as DFA/DFX, manufacturability evaluation of in-progress designs;

3. Schemes for capturing (product, process, and organization structure) requirements or characteristics for setting strategic and business goals;

4. Schemes to model enterprise activities (data and work flow) in order to determine types of functions best fit the desired profitability, responsiveness, quality and productivity and

5. Schemes to model team behavior, because most effective manufacturing environments involve a carefully orchestrated interplay between teams and machines.

• The Whole System: While designing an artifact, work-groups often forget that the product is a system. It consists of a number of subassemblies, each fulfilling a different and distinct function. A product is far more than the collection of components. Without a structure or "constancy-of-purpose" there is no system. The central difference between a CE transformation system and any other manufacturing system, such as serial engineering, is the manner in which the tasks’ distribution is stated and accomplished. In a CE transformation system, the purpose of every process step of a manufacturing system is not just to achieve a transformation, but to accomplish this in an optimal way. This arm proposes a system-based taxonomy, which is founded on parallel scheduling of tasks and breakdown structures for product and process, and work to realize a drastic reduction in time and cost in product and process realizations.

• Product Realization Taxonomy: This constitutes a "state of series of transformation" leading to a complete, or mature design. Product Realization Taxonomy involves items related to design completeness, product development practices, readiness feasibility, and quality assessment. In addition, CE requires these taxonomies to have a unified "product realization base." The enterprise integration metrics of the CE model should be well characterized, and the modeling methodologies and/or associated ontology for developing them should be adequate for describing and integrating enterprise functions. The methodologies should have built-in product and service accelerators. Taxonomy is comprised of the product, process descriptions, classification techniques, information concepts, representation, and transformation tasks (inputs, requirements, constraints and outputs). Specifications describing the transformation model for product realization are included as part of the taxonomy descriptions.

3. Second CE Wheel: Integrated Product Development

• Concurrent Function Deployment: The role of the organization and the engineers is changing today, as is the method of doing business. Competition has driven organizations to consider concepts such as time compression (fast-to-market), Concurrent Engineering, Design for X-ability, and Tools and Technology (such as Taguchi and Value Engineering), while designing and developing an artifact. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) addresses major aspects of “quality” with reference to the functions it performs, but this is one of the many functions that need to be deployed. With conventional deployment, it is difficult, however, to address all aspects of Total Values Management (TVM) such as X-ability, Cost, Tools and Technology, Responsiveness and Organization issues. It is not enough to deploy just the "Quality" into the product and expect the outcome to be World Class. TVM efforts are vital in maintaining a competitive edge in today’s world marketplace.

• CE Merits and Measures: Metrics are the basis of monitoring and measuring process improvement methodology and managing their effectiveness. Metric information assists in monitoring team progress, measuring quality of products produced, managing the effectiveness of the improved process, and providing related feedback. Individual assurances of DFX specifications (one at a time) do not capture the most important aspect of Concurrent Engineering - the system perspectives, or the trade-offs across the different DFX principles. While satisfying these DFX principles in this isolated manner, only those which are not in conflict are usually met. Concurrent engineering views the design and evaluates the artifact as a system, which has a wider impact than just sub-optimizing the sub-systems within each domain.

• Total Value Management: The most acclaimed slogan for introducing a quality program in early corporate days was simply to provide the most value for the lowest cost. This changed as competitiveness became more fierce. For example, during the introduction of the traditional TQM program in 1990 "getting a quality product to market for a fair price" was the name of the game. The new paradigm for CE now is TVM: "to provide the total value for the lowest cost in the least amount of time, and provide what satisfies the customers the most while generating a fair profit for the company." Here use of value is not just limited to "quality"” To provide long lasting added value, companies must change their philosophy towards things like X-ability, responsiveness, functionality, tools and technology, cost, architecture, etc.

• Integrated Product Development Methodology: A systematic methodology is essential in order to be able to integrate: (a) teamwork; (b) information modeling; (c) product realization taxonomy; and (d) measures of merits (called CE metrics), and quantitatively assess the effectiveness of the transformation. This may involve identification of performance metrics for measuring the product and process behaviors. Integrated product development methodology is geared to take advantage of the product realization taxonomy.

• Frameworks & Architectures: In order to adequately support the CE 4Ms (namely: modeling, methods, metrics and measurements), it is necessary to have an architecture that is openly accessible across different CE teams, information systems, platforms, and networks. Architecture consists of information contents, integrated data structures, data states, behavior and rules. An architecture not only provides an information base for easy storage, retrieval, and version control tracking; it can also be accessed by different users simultaneously, under ramp-up scheduling of parallel tasks, and in synchronization. We also need a product management system containing work management capabilities integrated with the database. This is essential because in CE there exists a large degree of flexibility for parallelism that must be managed in conjunction with other routine file and data management tasks.

• Capturing Life-cycle Intent: Most C4 tools are not really "capture" tools. In static representation of CAD geometry, configuration changes cannot be handled easily, particularly when parts and dimensions are linked. This has resulted in loss of configuration control, proliferation of changes to fix the errors caused by other changes, and sometimes ambiguous designs. By capturing "design intent" as opposed to "static geometry," configuration changes could be made and controlled more effectively using the power of the computer than through traditional CAD attributes (such as lines and surfaces). The power of a "capture" tool comes from the methods used in capturing the design intent initially so that the required changes can be made easily and quickly if needed. "Life-cycle capture" refers to the definition of the physical object and its environment in some generic form. "Life-cycle intent" means representing the life-cycle capture in a form, which can be modified and iterated until all the life-cycle specifications for the product are fully satisfied.

• Decision Support System: In CE, cooperation is required between CE teams, management, suppliers, and customers. A knowledge-based support system will help the participating teams in decision making and reflecting balanced views. Tradeoffs between conflicting requirements can be made on the basis of information obtained from sensitivity, multi-criterion objectives, simulation, or feedback. The taxonomy can be made a part of the decision support system (DSS) in supporting decisions about product decomposition by keeping track of what specifications are satisfied, ensuring common visibility in the state of product realization, including dispatching and monitoring of tasks, structure, corporate design histories, etc.

• Intelligent Information System (IIS): Another major goal of CE is to handle information intelligently in multi-media—audio, video, text, graphics. Since IIS equals CIM plus CE, with IIS, many relevant CE demands can be addressed and quickly processed. Examples include: (a) over local or wide area networks, such as SQL, which connects remote, multiple databases and multimedia repositories; (b) any needed information, such as recorded product designers’ design notes, figures, decisions, etc., can be made available on demand at the right place at the right time; (c) any team can retrieve information in the right format and distribute it promptly to the other members of the CE teams.

• Life-cycle Mechanization: Life-cycle mechanization equals CIM + Automation + CE. Life-cycle mechanization is arranged under a familiar acronym: CAE, for CIM, Automation, and CE. Since CAE also equals IIS plus automation, the major benefits of mechanization in CAE come from removing or breaking barriers. The three common barriers are: (a) integration (this is a term taken from CIM), (b) automation, and (c) cooperation (which is a term taken from CE). CE provides the decision support element, and CIM provides the framework & architecture plus the information management elements. Life-cycle Mechanization refers to the automation of life-cycle functions or creation of computerized modules that are built from one another and share the information from one another. This includes integration and seamless transfer of data between commercial computer-based engineering tools and product-specific in-house applications. This tends to reduce the dependency of many CE teams on communication links and product realization strategies, such as decomposition and concatenation.

• IPD Deployment Methodology: The purpose of this arm is to offer an implementation guideline for product redesign and development through its life-cycle functions. IPD implementation is a multi-track methodology. The tracks overlap, but still provide a structured approach to organizing product ideas and measures for concurrently performing the associated tasks. Concurrency is built in a number of ways, depending upon the complexity of the process or the system involved. This arm proposed a set of "Ten Commandments," which serves to guide the product and process iterative aspects of IPD rather than just the work-group collaborative aspects during the development cycle. The CE teamwork in the center of the wheel ensures that both local or zonal iterative refinements and collaborative refinements take place during each concurrent track.

4. A Synchronized Wheel-Set for CE

5. Major Attributes of this Synchronized Wheel-Set

Examples of major attributes incorporated in the dual wheel-set are:

• Eight fundamental principles on which CE is founded
• Seven primary components of concurrency and simultaneity
• CE environment and its five essential components
• Seven C’s to ensure cooperation among work-groups
• Seven primary influencing agents (called 7Ts) for achieving concurrency and simultaneity.
• Cooperative work-group environment spanned by four concurrent teams: (namely — logical team, personnel team, virtual team and technological team)

The first wheel (PPO theme) deals with process taxonomy for CE. Process taxonomy is necessary to adequately classify, distribute and distinguish differences in behaviors of complex enterprise integration systems. The innermost core of this process taxonomy is its foundation, which has four supporting "M elements": models, methods, metrics and measures as mentioned earlier.

References

[2] Prasad, B., 1996b, Concurrent Engineering Fundamentals, Volume II: Integrated Product Development, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, (in Press).

[3] ASME/NSF, 1995, Mechanical Engineering Curriculum Development Initiative: Integrating the Product Realization Process (PRP) into the Undergraduate Curriculum, New York: American Society of Mechanical Engineering.