Concurrent engineering, a current

philosophy with full prospects for the

future
This article discusses in detail the real-world applicability of concurrent engineering in the
industry, its costs and applications. For the authors, this way of working is becoming
essential when working simultaneously with large amounts of information, and they
conclude by adding that the best way to take advantage of these systems is to use them to
their full potential.
Espinosa, M.M. and Dominguez, M.
Higher Technical School of Industrial Engineers – UNED - Madrid
It is interesting to observe how a work philosophy that has been around for several years in productive
environments has not only not gone out of fashion but, thanks to the evolution observed in computer
systems, remains current and is ideally focused on the structural plans of the cutting-edge company. It is
common to hear concepts such as simultaneous engineering, concurrent design, corporate engineering..., in
this article we delve into these concepts and analyze their true field of applicability.
Figure 1. Concurrent engineering concept

Figure 1. Concurrent engineering concept

Figure 2. Concept of simultaneous engineering

Concept
Concurrent engineering, also called simultaneous engineering by many authors, is a phenomenon that
appeared in the early 1980s in Japan and reached Europe via America, mainly the United States, at the end
of that same decade.

The objective of an industrial company is, in a nutshell:

"Designing functional and aesthetically pleasing products in the shortest possible time to market, at the
lowest possible cost, with the aim of improving the quality of life of the end user."

Obviously, this objective must be achieved within the philosophy of the free market, where the industry must
live off its own resources.

The concurrent engineering that is now being addressed is a philosophy based on computer systems and,
like the vast majority of these systems, its fundamental contribution consists of a highly evolved way of
treating the available information.

Under this idea, various possible definitions have been proposed, but perhaps the one that best responds to
this idea is:

"Working philosophy based on information systems and founded on the idea of convergence, simultaneity or
concurrence of the information contained throughout the life cycle of a product regarding its design."

Including in the product design both the product itself and the production system that makes it possible.

This work philosophy involves, within a company, all people and entities that participate in any way in the life
cycle of a product in the responsibility of its design.

Clearly, design is no longer a one-person task, it is a team task. It is the responsibility of the team and
therefore important decisions must be made based on the information provided by each of the people
affected, with direct reference to suppliers and subcontractors.

Traditional design vs. concurrent design

In order to clarify some ideas regarding the concurrence, convergence or simultaneity of the information
necessary for the development of a design project, it is possible to analyse, even superficially, the design of
some of the products on the market.

Let us analyze the specific case of the design, for example, of the air conditioning system that a building will
have:

"An architect designs a building, warehouse, home or office and must normally plan for the installation of
some type of air conditioning. To size your building, you need volume data for the air conditioning system,
which you must plan for in your plans. But the system installer will not give you the dimensions of the
equipment you need if he does not first see the plans of the building to be conditioned. The air conditioning
system cannot be defined if the building has not been previously dimensioned. The building cannot be sized
if the appropriate provisions are not made to enable the necessary spaces to be occupied by the air
conditioning system that has not yet been defined. Concurrence is needed in design.

There is no need to go into the complexity of the elements that must be taken into account in order to build
any construction. It is assumed that, after many twists and turns, the building is built.

The building is occupied by a company that wishes to locate its offices. The layout is apparently valid, but
not even a month has passed and four partitions have already been raised, a wall has been knocked down
and the general manager's office, which was not big enough, has been extended. As a result, the person
who should have a window on the left to receive indirect light has to place their desk with their back to it, so
that daylight is permanently reflected on their screen and they are forced to close the blinds in order to work.
Furthermore, for some unknown reason, his table has been placed under the outlet of a jet of cold air that
gives him a permanent cold.

Clearly, there is something wrong with this scheme. And what is failing is not anything particularly complex,
it is a lack of information. The solution to this and any other design problem involves coordinating the
necessary tools to make product-related information, taking into account its entire life cycle, available to the
design team.

When faced with a design project, however simple it may seem, the volume of information that is handled
and necessary is such that it requires the participation of several people, each of them contributing their
"something" to the design. And the best way to coordinate this flow of information is through computer tools.
We are already entering into concurrent design.

The application of new technologies to any phase of new product development must pursue as fundamental
objectives product innovation and reduction of development time and therefore time to market.

Concurrent design and simultaneous engineering

As indicated at the beginning, concurrent engineering is also called, perhaps not very correctly,
simultaneous engineering and, today, also corporate engineering. Although the concepts are applied
interchangeably, there is a slight difference in nuance that needs to be pointed out. Concurrent engineering
itself arises from the concurrence or feedback of information from manufacturing areas to design in order to
design the product and the product's manufacturing system at the same time. This idea is evolving rapidly
and gaining a concurrence of information not only from manufacturing to design, but from all other elements
involved (Figure 1).

From a planning perspective, the concurrency philosophy implies an idea of simultaneity of tasks by
addressing in parallel both the product design and the design of the manufacturing system, the assembly
and packaging schemes, the launch plan and even obsolescence. This fact means that in planning and
organisation sectors we do not speak of concurrent engineering but of simultaneous engineering (figure 2).
Figure 3. Committed cost vs. incurred cost

Figure 4. Cost of modification

Corporate engineering
The evolution of computer aided design systems is certainly very rapid. Today, a company can have two
professionals working in parallel, one in the central offices in Spain and another in a factory in Southeast
Asia. These two people can communicate by working on the same project, using the same plans and the
same computer calculation applications, and also talking and "seeing each other's faces" through the
computer screen.

This technology is the same one that has always been used when two technicians speak over the telephone
while analyzing plans that have previously been sent by a traditional system such as postal mail or fax.
Thanks to email, the sending of information and communication became much more agile at one time, but
this situation has reached its point of maximum utility with the incorporation of Internet-based systems.

The emergence of the Internet has marked a milestone in communications in general, but it has also fully
entered into the uses of computer-aided design systems. Under this approach, when several people from
the same company work under this philosophy, we are no longer talking only about concurrent or
simultaneous engineering, but rather we are encompassing a more ambitious concept that is today called
corporate engineering.

Cost analysis
The cost factor, as always, is the fundamental factor when evaluating the suitability of the application of
these technologies. Studying the variation in the cost of a modification depending on the phase of the project
in which we find ourselves can be a decisive factor when applying these technologies.

But one thing is the real cost, the incurred cost, and quite another is the so-called committed cost. Figure 3
shows the difference between the two from the perspective of the different phases of the project.

The costs derived from the design phases are limited to the purchase of paper and the use of computer
hours. However, the decisions made at this stage greatly influence the cost of manufacturing and testing,
which is why the economic analysis should not be based on incurred costs but on committed costs.

The analysis results in the graph shown in Figure 4, which shows the cost of a modification, a change,
compared to the time at which it occurs.

Applications
In order to delve a little deeper into the field of concurrent engineering and its field of applicability in
industrial design, we proceed to analyze real situations that occur today in various sectors such as:

- Mechanical design.

- Assembly.

As has been seen along these lines, the greatest achievement of concurrent engineering consists in the
interrelation and integration of computer tools. Among these tools, one of fundamental value should be
highlighted: the simulator. The simulator is a computer system that, based on the information contained, is
capable of making a prediction of the functioning of a virtual prototype and, thus, helping the team of
designers to adapt their specifications to the functionality of the whole.
Figure 5. Computer systems in concurrent engineering

Mechanical design
Perhaps it is in the field of mechanical design that concurrent engineering has made the most progress. This
is probably because the design of the car, a set of precisely coupled mechanical elements, has been subject
to strong demands to obtain increasingly more and better results.

It should also be noted that Japan is an undisputed leader in the automotive sector, and its leadership is
undoubtedly due to its ability to develop and implement increasingly sophisticated automated design and
manufacturing tools, tools among which concurrent engineering and design are just one more cog.

The field of mechanical design had an initial phase in which drawings and plans for parts were drawn up
using computer systems, the primitive two-dimensional computer-aided design systems, whose mission was
to carry out, using a computer, the same tasks that the draftsman had previously carried out on his work
table.

These systems quickly evolved into more sophisticated systems, resulting in very powerful solid modelling
tools capable of moving parts in space and generating two-dimensional plans from three-dimensional
modelling.

These systems continue to evolve and have moved toward concurrent design. Concurrent design in this
sector is transcribed to a design-manufacturing concurrence when manufacturing a part. In this sense, the
designer can, at his workstation, create the piece to be designed with his solid modeler. In turn, based on
assisted design tools, it can generate detailed two-dimensional drawings of the part, drawings that can be
analyzed and corrected by a third party, who may be the client, the person responsible for manufacturing or
the person responsible for assembly, or better yet, all at once. Likewise, using computer tools, the designer
can simulate the manufacturing process using numerical control tools and the assembly, for example,
robotically, of the part at his or her own workstation.

In both cases, the designer himself or any other user can detect an error in a plan generated in two
dimensions. It is also possible that by running a machining program in the simulator, a possible fault can be
detected. Well, the power of concurrent design systems can reach the point where, when making a
modification to the 2D plans, the system itself is capable of regenerating the 3D plans according to the
modification. And even if the manufacturing program of a part is modified, the system itself is also capable of
modifying and regenerating both the initial 3D model and the 2D models obtained from it. As you can see,
this technology is leading to paperless manufacturing. The production plant where information is transmitted
solely and exclusively through computer systems.
Figure 6. From the two-dimensional plan to the real piece, through machining simulation

Mounting
In the field of assembly, another important factor in the idea of concurrence in the transmission of design
information must still be identified. If during the assembly phase, simulated of course, a problem is detected
that affects more than one part, for example an adjustment, the modification introduced, which affects
several parts, must be able to be processed in all of them in an automatic manner, without forcing the
designer to remember and locate which parts this modification may affect. Modifications are managed
automatically, without external intervention, the only element that guarantees that the whole maintains its
integrity and intrinsic coherence.

As we have seen, the amount of information needed by the design team is so large that managing it using
conventional methods is almost impossible. It is therefore necessary to use computers and computer
systems as common design tools.

But the use of these tools does not end up doing the same thing but in a different way. On the contrary, the
best way to take advantage of these systems is to use them to their full potential, taking advantage of their
capacity and gradually evolving the methods of product design and development.
Figure 7. Assembly simulation

Future prospects
As has been seen so far, there is a tendency to work with a large amount of information, obtained from very
different sources, capable of saturating the most privileged brain. The use of a computer is necessary and
essential.

It is necessary once again that all persons directly or indirectly related to the product take responsibility, to
the extent appropriate, for its design, from the market research department to after-sales service.

It is the responsibility of development managers to facilitate this task, so if a technician does not see this
task facilitated, it will not be their responsibility but rather that of the company's own managers.

For all this, it is necessary to rethink the classic procedures for product development and adapt them to
current technology, information technology, which necessarily involves concurrent engineering.

http://www.plastunivers.com/Tecnica/Hemeroteca/ArticuloCompleto.asp?ID=6599

http://ingenierias.uanl.mx/22/ingenieriaconcu.PDF

http://fing.uncu.edu.ar/catedras/industrial/proyectos/archivos/proyecto/
ingenieria_concurrente.pdf
CONCURRENT ENGINEERING

Concurrent Engineering is a philosophy aimed at systematically and

simultaneously integrating the design of products and processes, so
that all elements of a product's life cycle are considered from the
beginning, from initial conception to final disposition. It must also
provide a flexible and well-structured organization, propose networks
of functions supported by appropriate technologies and common
reference architectures (e.g. networked computers and databases).

This new approach to design provided by CI greatly enhances the role

that people play in their respective jobs, which must be well-instructed.

Regarding the IC work methodology, it essentially uses the same

functions involved in the development cycle of a product as the
traditional way of working, which is sequential engineering, which it
replaces; however, the difference lies in the constant interaction that
occurs between them.

To achieve its objectives, IC uses a series of principles, which are used

in a systematized approach and are related to the introduction of
cultural, organizational, and technological changes in companies,
through a series of methodologies, techniques and information
technologies.

The overall objectives pursued with the implementation of IC are:

1. Shorten product development times.

2. Increase productivity.
3. Increase flexibility.
4. Better use of resources.
5. High quality products.
6. Reduction in product development costs.

Glossary.

House of quality: Theoretical tool of IC. It is a product evaluation

technique, considering and focusing on customer needs, engineering
design requirements and competitiveness for a product. During the
development of a product, this technique is applied and the extent to
which the objectives are being met is measured based on the
established parameters.
Simulation: It is a numerical process designed to experiment with the
behavior of any system in a digital computer, along the time
dimension. The behavior of the system is presented based on
mathematical and logical models, designed for this purpose.
Time: It is necessary to shorten the time it takes for products to
reach the market, reducing the product development cycle time.
Design: This involves generating unique and innovative designs that
add value to the product and differentiate the product.
Implementation: Corresponds to the physical process necessary for
the inclusion of each of the concepts in time according to all the
considerations made. Here, one must not fail to carry out an instant
control at the time of implementation, with respect to the specific
planning and the general application structure.
Refinement: Here, decisions are made that will provide feedback to
the implementation point during the planning horizon and for as long
as the philosophy operates in the organization. This is why
improvement falls into a loop of no return with the implementation
point, that is, the model contemplates a constant improvement of
the philosophy. The above is based mainly on the fact that
philosophy contemplates, for example, the realization of specific
developments for itself in the organization. Regarding the above, an
important point within the improvement is the institutionalization of
research and development within the organization.

APPLICATION

Since IC is a relatively new methodology, it has not yet been

implemented in many companies here in Chile. Furthermore, in
the companies where it is applied, it is not done throughout
the company, but rather involves some of its departments to
work in this way.

One of the companies that has applied this working

methodology is ILKO SA, which is a manufacturer of kitchen
items. It has only been done jointly by three departments,
which are: Marketing, Design and Development.

The relationship that exists between these three departments

is of utmost importance both from the beginning and during
the execution of the product, since when the idea of
innovating in the field of roasting pans by adding handles
arose, the Development department created a prototype of the
supposed product in fiberglass reinforced plastic at full scale,
in addition to the plan so that they could see the original
product so that when it was presented to the Marketing people
they could see with their own eyes the product that was being
made. Marketing, for its part, conducts studies regarding the
material from which the product can be made so that the cost
is convenient, meaning that it is profitable and solvent in
itself. After the project is approved by Marketing and both
agree on the product to be made, Marketing estimates the
time that the product can be on sale and the approximate
monthly sales. This is done so that once the product is
manufactured, the quantity of products to be produced is sent
to production so as not to incur losses. Once Design delivers
the finished product, that is, with all the modifications and
ready to be produced and launched on the market, Marketing
takes responsibility for the product and up to this point the
development department has a direct relationship with the
product. After that, only monthly monitoring is done for two
years, where they analyze whether they have obtained the
expected results, since at the end of each month they review
how many of the manufactured products have been sold.

In short, the three departments have to be one, and if not, it is

a matter of achieving this union, since for the product to meet
all the requirements, the three must be closely linked, since
they have to jointly analyze the product, especially Marketing
and Design in the design process itself and in the creation of
the prototype of the product to be created.

Models.

Regarding the IC methodology, we will see that the functions

involved in the development cycle of a product are in constant
interaction. Thus, there are two ways to view and analyze this
interaction:

First, we can visualize the process as a multiple, constant and semi-

sequential interaction between the Marketing, Design, Production
and Support functions, supporting this interaction through an
information system that relates all of them to each other, in order to
increase the dialogue between them and encourage work in
multidisciplinary teams, as seen in the figure.
On the other hand, it is possible to see that all the functions associated with product
design form an analysis circle on which the design team must base itself in an IC
environment, to generate the final design that will be manufactured by the company. This
circle is part of the design stage, which includes computational tools (software such as
CAD tools, simulators, etc.) to support the dialogue between these functions. In addition,
it requires highly trained professionals to use these tools that constitute the logical control
of this circle and that, in turn, form part of the center of the circle. The design stage also
interacts bidirectionally with the Marketing functions and unidirectionally towards
production, which, in turn, interacts again with Marketing through users or clients, as
seen in the figure.

In IC the product must be programmed for the entire life cycle,

and must therefore be included in all possible stages in the
development cycle, as shown in the figure.
Literature

Oportus S. Claudio, "Theoretical foundations and design of a strategy

for the implementation of concurrent engineering application model
for the national industry", Santiago, University of Santiago, Chile,
1995.

Sepulveda S. Juan, "Methods and applications of concurrent

engineering: research and development proposition", Santiago,
University of Santiago, Chile, 1994.
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