Decision support tool using concurrent engineering framework for agile manufacturing

Abstract

Competitive situations have led to increasing attention being paid to customer satisfaction, of which timely and customised services are the key concepts. The need for a method of rapidly and cost-effectively developing products including design, process planning and shop floor control system has led to the concept of agile manufacturing. This paper proposes concurrent engineering (CE) framework using effective application of information technology and knowledge-based engineering using object oriented technology which will help adoption and implementation of agile manufacturing practices. This gives manufacturing units an extra edge in today’s cost and time competitive market. Considerable improvement was achieved in a machine tool manufacturing company on the basis of the methodology presented in this paper. CE was implemented for its new products, systems and processes are aligned and leads to agility to manufacturing. Lead time could decrease more than 50% compared with similar development projects carried out in this company.