Concurrent Engineering Process Research Articles

Understanding collaboration in sub-structured teams through a computational model of set-based concurrent engineering

Coordinating the collaboration within sub-structured teams created for large engineering projects presents several challenges. Set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE), by maintaining several candidate designs for each subproblem throughout the process, may alter the best ways to coordinate subteams in these projects, compared to point-based concurrent engineering (PBCE) processes in which only one candidate design is maintained for each subproblem. Previous studies have introduced SBCE to industry with positive results and have corroborated its stated benefits through computational study, but researchers have yet to systematically study how SBCE interacts with sub-structured teams. This work augments a multi-agent model developed to simulate and study SBCE, the Point/Set-Organized Research Teams (PSORT) platform, to model sub-structured teams with different forms of intra-subteam collaboration, including joint iteration, design sharing, or no collaboration at all. Design projects are then simulated using these collaboration methods with PBCE and SBCE conditions to investigate how SBCE affects team performance under different modes of intra-subteam collaboration. These studies find that SBCE enables nominal subteams to combine the efforts of multiple designers on individual subproblems with minimal losses, while high levels of collaboration during development are found to assist designers in overcoming design barriers, which SBCE facilitates by maintaining many design options.

Life cycle engineering of space systems: Preliminary findings

The application of Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) within the concurrent engineering process presents a viable method for assessing environmental, social and economic impacts of space missions. Despite this, the novelty of the concept within space mission design has meant that the approach has not yet been widely implemented. This paper successfully demonstrates this technique for the first time and presents LCE results of three SmallSat missions designed at the University of Strathclyde using the concurrent engineering approach. The Strathclyde Space Systems Database (SSSD) was deployed to calculate the total life cycle impacts of each mission, including the identification of common design hotspots. A novel technique called Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) was also trialled, whereby several impact categories were converted into single scores as a test case to reduce the learning curve for engineers. Overall, the LCE results indicate that the manufacturing & production of the launcher dominate the majority of impact categories. Other common hotspots were found to relate to the use of germanium as a substrate as well as the launch event. As an additional observation, in terms of the behavioural aspects, it was clear that study participants were more open to the concept of LCE with each new concurrent engineering session, evidenced by increasing levels of interaction amongst study participants. These findings are intended to provide industrial stakeholders with a preliminary benchmark relating to the general sustainability footprint of SmallSats, whilst demonstrating the viability of integrating LCE within the concurrent engineering process of space missions.

Integrated Production and Distribution Planning using Mathematical Model for Maximizing Profit

In three-dimensional concurrent engineering context, product, process, and supply chain designs are approached by the imperative of concurrency principle. The imperative of concurrency proposes product architecture and supply chain architecture conducted simultaneously. The detailed product design and production process design are conducted simultaneously. While manufacturing system design is conducted simultaneously with logistic system design. This study concerns on integrating production planning with distribution planning in a new plastic bags plant. Since the plant is relatively new, the number of orders is still scarce. Therefore, production planning becomes critical. Producing more products than required creates inventories while producing as many as the order required creates an intermittent production schedule. A mathematical is developed to simultaneously schedule production and distribution to maximize profit. The model provides solutions on the number of materials to be delivered, the number of products produced and delivered within its period for the planning horizon.

Data-Driven Set Based Concurrent Engineering Method for Multidisciplinary Design Optimization

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">In the development of multi-disciplinary systems, many experts in different discipline fields need to collaborate with each other to identify a feasible design where all multidisciplinary constraints are satisfied. This paper proposes a novel data-driven set-based concurrent engineering method for multidisciplinary design optimization problems by using machine learning techniques. The proposed set-based concurrent engineering method has two advantages in the concurrent engineering process. The first advantage is the decoupling ability of multidisciplinary design optimization problems. By introducing the probabilistic representation of multidisciplinary constraint functions, feasible regions of each discipline sub-problem can be decoupled by the rule of product. The second advantage is an efficient concurrent study to explore feasible regions. A batch sampling strategy is introduced to find feasible regions based on Bayesian Active Learning (BAL). In the batch BAL, Gaussian Process models of each multi-disciplinary constraint are trained. Based on the posterior distributions of trained Gaussian Process models, an acquisition functions that combine Probability of Feasibility and Entropy Search are evaluated. In order to generate new sampling points in and around feasible regions, optimization problems to maximize the acquisition function are solved by assuming that the constraint function is Lipschitz continuous. To show the effectiveness of the proposed method, a practical numerical example of a multi-disciplinary vehicle design problem is demonstrated.</div></div>

Product Development of Natural Fibre-Composites for Various Applications: Design for Sustainability.

New product development review article aims to consolidate the principles and current literature on design for sustainability to seek the field’s future direction. In this point of view, the design for sustainability methods can be established under the idea of sustainability in dimensions of ecology, economy and social pillars. Design for sustainability concept is implemented in concurrent engineering, including concept, embodiment and detail design processes. Integrating sustainability in engineering designs is crucial to producing greener products, system innovation, and services aligned with current market demand. Currently, many concurrent engineering studies related to natural fibre-reinforced polymer composites associated with sustainability enhance the application of design for sustainability techniques by professional designers. However, the current literature is scarce in bridging the design for sustainability concept with concurrent engineering during the design development stage, and these areas should be further developed. Several other future research directions, such as the need for aligning with principles and applications, along with exploring the relationships between the design for sustainability techniques and views of sustainability, are presented in this review paper.

Set-Based Concurrent Engineering Process Model and Systematic Application on an Electronic Card Reader

Set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE), also known as set-based design, is a state-of-the-art approach to the new product development process. SBCE, simply, provides an environment where designers explore a wide range of alternative solutions in the early stages of product development. After gaining knowledge, solutions are narrowed down until the optimal solution is ensured. Such an environment saves considerable amount of cost and time while reaching innovation and high quality in the products. However, industrial practitioners seek a clear and systematic application throughout an SBCE process. This paper demonstrates a well-structured SBCE process model and its step-by-step application on a product called “electronic card reader”. Real data is used in the industrial case study. Results showed the benefits of applying SBCE in both the product, and the process of new product development.

Physics-based trade-off curves to develop a control access product in set-based concurrent engineering environment

PurposeThis paper aims to present a process to generate physics-based trade-off curves (ToCs) to facilitate lean product development processes by enabling two key activities of set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE) process model that are comparing alternative design solutions and narrowing down the design set. The developed process of generating physics-based ToCs has been demonstrated via an industrial case study which is a research project.Design/methodology/approachThe adapted research approach for this paper consists of three phases: a review of the related literature, developing the process of generating physics-based ToCs in the concept of lean product development, implementing the developed process in an industrial case study for validation through the SBCE process model.FindingsFindings of this application showed that physics-based ToC is an effective tool to enable SBCE activities, as well as to save time and provide the required knowledge environment for the designers to support their decision-making.Practical implicationsAuthors expect that this paper will guide companies, which are implementing SBCE processes throughout their lean product development journey. Physics-based ToCs will facilitate accurate decision-making in comparing and narrowing down the design-set through the provision of the right knowledge environment.Originality/valueSBCE is a useful approach to develop a new product. It is essential to provide the right knowledge environment in a quick and visual manner which has been addressed by demonstrating physics knowledge in ToCs. Therefore, a systematic process has been developed and presented in this paper. The research found that physics-based ToCs could help to identify different physics characteristics of the product in the form of design parameters and visualise in a single graph for all stakeholders to understand without a need for an extensive engineering background and for designers to make a decision faster.

Agile methodologies applied to Integrated Concurrent Engineering for spacecraft design

In recent years, space projects have evolved to faster and more variable projects. To adjust the design processes in accordance, new work methodologies arise, as the Concurrent Engineering (CE). This working discipline is characterized by collaborative design and the flux of information being improved by working in a dedicated environment. CE has been recently adopted by space industry for the preliminary design phase of spacecrafts and other space systems. However, this methodology does not envisage tasks prioritization, which is a fundamental aspect to achieve an optimal design solution with an efficient allocation of resources. In this work a variation of CE discipline by applying Agile methodologies (in which the aspect of task prioritization is essential), is proposed. Agile methodologies allow the proper distribution of the design effort depending on the project priorities, the state of the design and the requirements, in a continuous process to improve the design solution. The general aspects of the proposed method are presented and applied to the design of a space mission, the results being analysed and compared with to the classical CE process in order to outline its differences and similarities with CE and Agile methodologies and show its potential for a new environment for space project design.

Dynamic platform modeling for concurrent product-production reconfiguration

To meet a wide range of customer needs, a variety of product concepts can be modeled employing a platform approach. Whereas frequent market changes can be accommodated by dynamically modifying product concepts in iterations, capabilities in production are seldom well incorporated as part of design iterations. In this paper, a dynamic platform modeling approach that supports concurrent product-production reconfiguration is presented. The approach builds on Set-Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) processes and a function modeling technique is used to represent product-production variety streams inherent in a production operation model. To demonstrate the approach, a comprehensive case from the aerospace industry is presented. Conceptual representations of a set of aero engine sub-systems and a variety of welding configurations, including their inherent constraints, are mutually modeled and assessed. The results show that a set of product-production alternatives can be dynamically controlled by integrating product-production constraints using a production operation model. Following SBCE processes, inferior alternatives can be put aside until new information becomes available and a new set of alternatives can be reconfigured. The dynamics and concurrency of the approach can potentially reduce the risk of late and costly modifications that propagate from design to production.

Creating Knowledge Environment during Lean Product Development Process of Jet Engine

Organizations invest intense resources in their product development processes. This paper aims to create a knowledge environment using trade-off curves during the early stages of the set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE) process of an aircraft jet engine for a reduced noise level at takeoff. Data is collected from a range of products in the same family as the jet engine. Knowledge-based trade-off curves are used as a methodology to create and visualize knowledge from the collected data. Findings showed that this method provides designers with enough confidence to identify a set of design solutions during the SBCE applications.

Supporting Early Stage Set-Based Concurrent Engineering with Value Driven Design

AbstractSet-Based Concurrent Engineering is commonly adopted to drive the development of complex products and systems. However, its application requires design information about a future product that is often not mature enough in the early design stages, and that it is not encompassing a service and lifecycle- oriented perspective. There is a need for manufacturers to understand, since the early design stages, how customer value is created along the lifecycle of a product from a hardware and service perspective, and how to use such information to screen radically new technologies, trade-off promising design configurations and commit to a design concept. The paper presents an approach for the multidisciplinary value assessment of design concepts in sub-systems design, encompassing the high-level concept screening and the trade-off of different design concepts, and enabling the integration of value models results into a Set-based Concurrent Engineering process. The approach is described through its application in the case study of the development of a subsystem component for a commercial aircraft engine.

Description Languages for Consistency Management Scenarios Based on Examples from the Industry Automation Domain

To cope with the increasing complexity of developing and maintaining modern (software) systems, multiple abstractions (models) of the same system can be established and used to allow different domain experts to collaborate and contribute their respective expertise. This divide-and-conquer, model-based approach requires, however, support for a concurrent engineering process, i.e., providing a means of checking, restoring, and ensuring the consistency of all involved and concurrently maintained models. The task of providing such support is often referred to as consistency management. Although there exist various approaches to consistency management and numerous (industrial) case studies described in the literature on bidirectional transformations (bx), there is currently no uniform description of diverse but related industrial applications of model synchronisation and other forms of consistency management. This makes it challenging to detect similarities and differences related to requirements, constraints, applied techniques and tools. It is thus difficult to compare and transfer knowledge gained from (successful) projects to other bx approaches or even other bx tools for the same general approach. In this paper, therefore, we propose a description language for envisioned scenarios in the problem domain of consistency management, as well as a complementary description language for solution strategies in terms of method fragments and method patterns in the solution domain of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE). Our work is inspired by previous research in the bx and MDE communities, and is also based on our collective experience from over ten years of investigating a series of application scenarios in the industry automation section together with Siemens AG as an industrial partner. [Abridged due to arXiv]

Conceptual data model: A foundation for successful concurrent engineering

Today, phase A studies of future space systems are often conducted in special design facilities such as the Concurrent Engineering Facility at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Within these facilities, the studies are performed following a defined process making use of a data model for information exchange. Quite often it remains unclear what exactly such a data model is and how it is implemented and applied. Nowadays, such a data model is usually a software using a formal specification describing its capabilities within a so-called meta-model. This meta-model, often referred as conceptual data model, is finally used and instantiated as system model during these concurrent engineering studies. Such software also provides a user interface for instantiating and sharing the system model within the design team and it provides capabilities to analyze the system model on the fly. This is possible due to the semantics of the underlying conceptual data model creating a common language used to exchange and process design information. This article explains the implementation of the data model at DLR and shows information how it is applied in the concurrent engineering process of the Concurrent Engineering Facility. It highlights important aspects concerning the modeling capabilities during a study and discusses how they can be implemented into a corresponding conceptual data model. Accordingly, the article presents important aspects such as rights management and data consistency and the implications of them to the software’s underlying technology. A special use case of the data model is depicted and shows the flexibility of the implementation proven by a study of a multi-module space station.

Development of product platforms: Theory and methodology

There is a trend toward increased customization of goods to satisfy a wide range of customers using product platforms. However, there is an erroneous notion that product platforms can only be used to provide economic viability in production thanks to the reuse of physical components among a family of products. Yet, this is a limited perception of the potential of a product platform. In this article, an object-oriented approach to support the development of product platforms is proposed to increase efficiency through reuse and flexibility of designs among a family of products. Two modes of the platform development process are addressed: platform preparation and platform execution. Platform preparation prescribes the methods needed to model platform objects, using enhanced function-means models and set-based concurrent engineering processes. During the platform execution process, sets of design alternatives can be configured concurrently throughout the conceptual, system, and detailed phases of the platform development. Three cases illustrate how the same approach may be used in different design scenarios: design space exploration and extension, supply-chain collaboration, and configure-to-order. The approach supports system architects and design engineers in making design decisions that propel the platform development work by enabling analysis in stages where designs are immature and evaluating the goodness of the alternatives early. Ultimately, product platforms can be efficiently developed for modularity and scalability to find feasible product variants and meet the needs of a multitude of customers.

Product lifecycle management solution for collaborative development of Wearable Meta-Products using set-based concurrent engineering

The trend of smart products is now changing the world and transforming the life of customers. People tend to be more tied to smart, connected products seeking to ease and improve quality of life and find new ways to make things such as daily tasks differently. In this context, the world of clothing has noticed a big advance targeting various applications: sport, gaming, and health monitoring and rehabilitation. Wearable smart products are intelligent hybrid products made of garments, sensor networks, and applications, interacting with users and the environment capable of real-time data processing and storage, with capabilities to extend functionalities by communicating with other things. The multi-functionality property of smart products needs the integration of various electronic parts. High variety of parts with different interfaces makes the development of smart products complex than generic products and requires the involvement and close collaboration of multidisciplinary team (garment designers, sensor networks designers, and application developers). A high number of alternative designs can be considered at the beginning of the design process due to this variety and high availability of parts. The smart product development team needs then to explore multiple candidate solutions before finding the best smart product design that complies with the requirements. This work proposes the set-based concurrent engineering to deal efficiently with the alternatives. Therefore, this article provides a novel approach to shift from set-based concurrent engineering theoretical principles toward a pragmatic (practical) application to wearable smart products taking advantage of product lifecycle management system capabilities for the implementation. The use of product lifecycle management system to support the set-based concurrent engineering process will contribute for a better understanding of the approach avoiding confusions, simplify the architecture of the solution in view of integration with other systems, and enable the stakeholders to focus on the level of innovation of the smart product.

A study of overlapping and functional interaction mechanisms for concurrent engineering processes

This article reports the use of a stochastic computer model to study hybrid overlapping and functional interaction strategies, where, within a given process, different degrees of overlapping or gradually increasing or decreasing functional interaction were modeled. The study aims to understand the contribution of these strategies to process performance, that is, product development effort and span time. Simulation results of the hybrid models are discussed in comparison to a baseline model, where the baseline process was uniformly overlapped and functional interaction was constant throughout its execution. Research outcomes indicate that under high information uncertainty, sequential processes perform better than any model with overlap. When uncertainty is moderate or low, the baseline model outperforms the hybrid models. Under high sensitivity conditions, hybrid overlapping models perform equally well in comparison to the baseline model with complete overlap, and superiorly when information evolution is slow.

APPLICATION OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING IN PRODUCT AND PROCESS DESIGN

APPLICATION OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING IN PRODUCT AND PROCESS DESIGN

APPLICATION OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING IN PRODUCT AND PROCESS DESIGN

APPLICATION OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING IN PRODUCT AND PROCESS DESIGN

Change prediction using interface data

Managing change can be challenging due to the high levels of interdependency in concurrent engineering processes. A key activity in engineering change management is propagation analysis, which can be supported using the change prediction method. In common with most other change prediction approaches, the change prediction method has three important limitations: L1: it depends on highly subjective input data; L2: it is capable of modelling ‘generalised cases’ only and cannot be; customised to assess specific changes; and L3: the input data are static, and thus, guidance does not reflect changes in the design. This article contributes to resolving these limitations by incorporating interface information into the change prediction method. The enhanced method is illustrated using an example based on a flight simulator.

The Impact of Concurrent Engineering Strategy on New Compex Product Development Process in Organization: An Empirical Study of Manufacturing and Service Industry in Malaysia

Taking into account the customers, supplier and organization involvement in the new product development (NPD), this article focuses on the synthesis, evaluation, and selection of various sub-factors of concurrent engineering involved in new product development process. The aim of this study was to provide the reliability and validity of six sub-factors of concurrent engineering model of the 49-item questionnaire and to analyze its association with concurrent engineering and new product development process in a sample of 35 manufacturing and services organization located in Johor, Malaysia. Methods: A self reported survey was conducted in 35 manufacturing and services organization located in Johor, Malaysia. Results: Appropriate internal consistencies of the six sub-scales: customers relationship, team development, continuity, tools and techniques, suppliers involvement and corporate focus and their association with concurrent engineering, were obtained. Zero-order correlation and regressions analysis replicated the theoretically assumed structure of the effective concurrent engineering (ECE). Evidence of criterion validity was obtained from cross-correlations of the scales and from their linear and multiple regression analysis. Finally, all seven scales were associated with a highly significant ratio of concurrent engineering as predicted by fundamental theory. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study the seven version of the model, questionnaire is considered a reliable and valid instrument for measuring association in developing the new complex product development process.