Concurrent Engineering Tools Research Articles

How Resilient are Lucid Motivators? Endeavoring Reforms for Effects of Psycho-social Factors on Workers Health Through Concurrent Engineering

BackgroundAs the tremendous impact of extreme workloads, arduous working conditions, and disorganization disrupt humane job definitions in some industries, the need for workplace re-articulation was interfered to ameliorate psycho-social factors and suggest organizational intervention strategies. Especially for colossally wounded health-care (HC) systems, today it is now even more unrealizable to retain workforce resilience considering the immense impact of overwhelming working conditions. MethodsThis study introduces employment of concurrent engineering tools to re-design humane workplaces annihilating abatement over devoured resources. The study handles HC-workforce resilience in a pioneering motive to introduce transformation of well-known motivators and proposes solutions for retention and resilience issues grounding on HC workers’ own voice. ResultsThe proposed adjustable approach introduces integral use of focus group studies, SWARA, and QFD methods, and was practiced on a real-world case regarding Turkish HC workforce. The paper also presents widespread effects of findings by tendering generalized psycho-social rehabilitation strategies. Results confirmed the modifications of the most potent incessant motivators. Conclusion“Burn out issues” and “Challenging work” were found as the most important motivator and satisfier, respectively, to be exigently fulfilled. Corrective interventions, required resolutions, and workplace articulation connotations were arbitrated in terms of entire outcomes on four dimensions in three different planning periods considering the current status, repercussions of pandemic, and contingency of similar catastrophes. Descriptive illustrations were additionally presented to support deducted interpretations.

Implementing Concurrent Engineering and QFD Method to Achieve Realization of Sustainable Project

In this paper, we present the impact of concurrent engineering strategies, methods, and tools on product sustainability. Concurrent engineering can be used to achieve the primary goals of a product realization project: lower costs, shorter times, high quality, and increasing value. Currently, it is important that new products also meet product sustainability goals, such as economic, environmental, and social goals. The sustainability of a product can be influenced the most in the early stages of product development, so in this paper, we present a customized quality function deployment (QFD) method called the house of sustainability, which translates sustainability requirements into technical solutions for a product. A seven-step process for implementing a sustainable product realization project is also proposed, in which the house of sustainability is one of the most important tools. The proposed process is illustrated with an example of a concurrent product realization project in engineering to order production.

Innovation in solar vehicles: From concept to prototype in less than 24 months

The present article describes the integrated path used for the conceptual, functional and constructive design of an exclusive multi-occupant solar-powered vehicle. The project was based on the massive implementation of concurrent engineering and quality tools, rarely used in such an integrated way, featuring a novel and attractive design, 3D CAD modelling, structural and fluid dynamics validations, in-scale rapid prototyping, functional tests, multi-objective optimization, parts manufacturing and assembly. Thanks to this approach, the solar car prototype presented high technological contents, especially in terms of materials, structures and processes. Furthermore, large CNC-machined multi-material molds and hybrid manufacturing solutions were adopted to speed up the production phase allowing to move from the initial concept to the final prototype within 24 months. Since June 2018, the solar vehicle is on the road transporting 4 people, weighing less than 300kg, reaching speeds of 120km/h and able to travel hundreds of kilometers with zero-emission and no fuel consumption.

Design and implementation of a robotic active solar distiller based on a Fresnel concentrator and a photovoltaic system

In this article, an active solar distiller is designed and implemented. The distiller consists of a Fresnel lens concentrator with an auxiliary photovoltaic energy collector, which supplies an electrical water preheating process. The light concentrator and the photovoltaic system are oriented through a three-degree-of-freedom robotic system, achieving the sun tracking and focus tasks of the concentration process. The design uses concurrent engineering tools to improve the general behavior of the system for energy collection and water distillation. This approach demands some different analyses such as optical, structural, thermal, and dynamic, modeling, which yield to the main design. The system is validated through different tests concerning the energy collection process and the resulting water quality, leading to an energetically autonomous effective system that can provide an alternative distillation process.

The Application of Concurrent Engineering Tools and Design Structure Matrix in Designing Tire

The development of automobile industry in Indonesia is growing rapidly. This phenomenon causes companies related to the automobile industry such as tire industry must develop products based on customers’ needs and considering the timeliness of delivering the product to the customer. It could be reached by applying strategic planning in developing an integrated concept of product development. This research was held in PT. XYZ that applied the sequential approach in designing and developing products. The need to improve in one stage of product development could occur re-designing that needs longer time in developing a new product. This research is intended to get an integrated product design concept of tire pertaining to the customer's needs using Concurrent Engineering Tools by implementing the two-phased of product development. The implementation of Concurrent Engineering approach results in applying the stage of project planning, conceptual design, and product modules. The product modules consist of four modules that using Product Architecture - Design Structure Matrix to ease the designing process of new product development.

Integration of Failure Mode Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to Improve the Packaging Process for Automotive Stamping Part

In the business world today, organizations must be able to respond promptly and efficiently to the changing market needs. Therefore, the flaw in the conventional approach such as inefficiency and time consumption can contribute to product failure in the marketplace. This hinders organizations to provide the performance required and should be improved to respond to the current situation. Concurrent engineering should be adopted to overcome the problems associated with the conventional approach. This paper focuses on minimizing the conventional method by implementing concurrent engineering tools and techniques. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to reduce the wastage of time and costs, as well as labor during packaging process, by identifying the failure of the existing process and choosing a new concept for the packaging process using the integration of FMECA and AHP approach. Failures in the current procedure of packaging process were identified by using FMECA analysis, and 4 new concepts were proposed to improve the packaging process. To select the best concept, AHP was used due to the variety aspects to be considered, such as performance, maintenance, time of development, cost of development and potential cause of failure, in the selection of new concepts. The result shows that the proposed new concept for the packaging process can reduce the time, costs, and labor, in addition to the various aspects considered in the selection of a new concept. This paper presents the importance of considering the concurrent engineering tools in the manufacturing industry.

Implementation of a generic concurrent engineering environment framework for boatbuilding

Boatbuilding is a growth market with global competition and tight profit margins. Concurrent engineering is not presently prevalent within the boatbuilding industry and yet this is a technique that has found much success in other industries. A methodology has, therefore, been developed to aid design in the leisure boatbuilding industry. This environment uses collaborative engineering and automated communication to aid the passing of direct communication between all members of the design team. This paper determines the characteristics of importance within boatbuilding and relates these to a framework concurrent engineering environment aimed specifically at this industry. The current work focuses on the structural and production subsystems in an attempt to improve design for production. The use of concurrent engineering tools has been highlighted with an example.

Best Practices for Integrating the Concurrent Engineering Environment into Multipartner Project Management

The use of the Internet, e-mail, and other technologies has been steadily filtering into the building process, creating a concurrent engineering (CE) environment, and enabling collaborative efforts in the building process. The concurrent engineering environment is established by a variety of tools, including internet accessible servers, e-mail, mobile telephones, and many other existing CE tools. Organizations involved in the construction process recognize the need for assessment of benefits resulting from CE tools, but find the evaluation of these benefits difficult and complicated. The project presented in this paper, “project management and organization in the concurrent engineering environment (ProCE),” is applicable to both researchers and practitioners. The ProCE project developed a measuring model, which may be used by future researchers in this area, attempted to measure benefits derived from using the CE environment in construction design and project management routines, and developed guidelines ...

Workflows and cooperative processes

AbstractWorkflows emphasize the partial order of activities, and the flow of data between activities. In contrast, cooperative processes emphasize the sharing of artefact, and its gradual evolution toward the final product, under the cooperative and concurrent activities of all the involved actors.This article contrasts workflow and cooperative processes and shows that they are more complementary than conflicting and that, provided some extensions, both approaches can fit into a single tool and formalism.This article presents Celine, a concurrent engineering tool that can also define and support classic workflows and software processes. We claim that the availability of both classes of features allows for the modeling and support of very flexible processes, closer to software engineering reality. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

State of the art of the concurrent engineering technique in the automotive industry

In this article a study of state of the art of the concurrent engineering technique in the automotive industry is presented. The importance and benefits of concurrent engineering in automotive industry are highlighted. The study in the areas of concurrent engineering tools, especially the information technology tools such as finite element analysis, computer-aided design and expert systems, is carried out. The use of concurrent engineering techniques in the development of the automotive engine and transmission, chassis and body is finally described.

ICT-enabled Collaborative Working Environment for Concurrent Conceptual Design

Effective concurrent conceptual design (CCD) in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is essential for reducing project lead times and improving the quality of the resulting design. Computer-aided techniques and tools are needed to facilitate concurrent engineering (CE) between geographically distributed project team members during conceptual design (CD). This paper reports on a research project that has both designed the system architecture and developed a Web-based CE tool to improve AEC projects during the CD stage. It describes the applications requirements for construction projects and presents a layered and integrated approach for the integration of multidisciplinary perspectives in concurrent conceptual design. A prototype system (INTEGRA) has been developed to encapsulate this approach. Details of the overall system architecture and software components are included in the paper. The aim of the INTEGRA system is to develop IT-based CE tools that support AEC professionals' collaborative work in a conducive and flexible way. The paper concludes that CCD is an interesting and challenging area, and that many topics remain open for further investigation. In particular, there is a need to ensure the integration of legacy systems used by AEC professionals into new collaborative design systems.

Concurrent engineering utilities for controlling interactions in process planning

This paper presents two concurrent engineering tools for serving in process planning. The first one, as “design for manufacturing” utility, evaluates critical interactions between several types of machining features (i.e., holes, pockets, etc.) on prismatic parts, and modifies original design (if possible) and reflects the modifications to all down- and up-stream stations in CAD/CAM integration. The second one is for group technology and flexibility, by which products are designed according to the existing manufacturing system. Methodologies of the developed systems are illustrated with several examples throughout the paper.

Critical company assessment and advisory support for introduction of concurrent engineering practices

The continuous introduction of advanced business practices in small-/medium-size enterprises (SMEs) is becoming essential in developing sustainable supply chains. This paper reports on a new and innovative advisory methodology and tools which support the introduction of Concurrent Engineering (CE) practices by SMEs in the European Aerospace sector. The methodology is based on three integrated modules: company assessment, solution identifier, and tool selector, where the assessment uses an innovative mix of interactive questioning and best practice benchmarking techniques. The output of the system is a set of CE tools and guidelines for their implementation. The methodology has been developed and demonstrated as a multiplatform web-based consulting software system, and has been successfully industrially validated through use in SMEs in the UK, Germany and Italy.

Prioritizing engineering characteristics in quality function deployment with incomplete information: A linear partial ordering approach

Quality function deployment (QFD) has been used as the concurrent engineering tool to save the production cost and time. It is not easy to get information or knowledge for the prioritization of customer attributes and engineering characteristics during the QFD planning process. This research suggests a linear partial ordering approach for assessing the knowledge from participants and prioritizing engineering characteristics. The linear partial information will be used in extracting weights of customer attributes and relationship values of customer attributes between engineering characteristics. Using the linear partial ordering can reduce the cognitive burden of designers and engineers of QFD planning team. Four types of dominance relation that are frequently used in multi-attribute decision making with incomplete information are used to determine the priorities of engineering characteristics when the linear partial orderings of participants are given. The dominance relations between engineering characteristics can be established by solving a series of linear programming problem.

Complex Concurrent Engineering and the Design Structure Matrix Method

Concurrent engineering (CE) principles have considerably matured over the last decade. However, many companies still face enormous challenges when implementing and managing CE practices. This is due to the increased complexity of engineering products and processes, on one hand, and the lack of corresponding CE models and tools, on the other hand. This paper focuses on four critical problems that challenge management while implementing CE in complex product development (PD) projects. We refer to these problems as: iteration, overlapping, decomposition and integration, and convergence problems. We describe these problems proposing a unified modeling and solution approach based on the design structure matrix (DSM) method, which is an information exchange model that allows managers to represent complex task relationships to better plan and manage CE initiatives.

Quality Function Deployment in Design/Build Projects

In the manufacturing sector, companies have successfully applied concurrent engineering tools, including Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to determine customers' needs for the design at its early stages of development. However, despite its success stories in other industries, QFD has been applied only sparingly in the construction industry. The design/build (D/B) contractor, who bears both design and construction responsibilities, would find the QFD methodology useful. This paper examines the awareness and applicability of QFD methodology in D/B contracts. The research looks into the benefits, relevance, and problems in the application of QFD in D/B contracts. A qualitative approach in the form of in-depth interviews with experienced contractors involved in D/B contracts was carried out. The results suggest that, generally, D/B contractors could appreciate the merits of the QFD system. However, the decisions for implementation of QFD by the contractors were subjected to the “push” and “pull” factors that may vary from one organization to another.

Implementation of concurrent engineering in the suppliers to the automotive industry

In the past the main processes in the introduction of a new vehicle into the market were developed by large manufacturers, or original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and the vast majority of concurrent engineering (CE) research work was based on issues relevant to them. Today the situation has changed world-wide. Large companies outsource a great deal of high level engineering work to suppliers. This outsourcing is justified by lower costs and higher quality, and at the same time every company can use its resources in the areas it has technical expertise. However, most suppliers still follow the ‘build and break’ approach. The cost of introducing new approach such as CE, and adopting new technologies such as computer aided engineering (CAE) is substantial, as this cost adds to the operating costs and is only justifiable if it enables the development of higher quality products in less time with fewer people. The authors have examined a number of available CE frameworks and noted that these frameworks dealt with different aspects of CE in different degrees of detail. But they did not differentiate between the introduction of CE in large manufacturers on one hand and their suppliers on the other. This project is based on the recognition that a different approach to CE implementation is needed at the suppliers’ level. A three level framework has been proposed, i.e., (i) the environment in which the suppliers operate, (ii) a five stage implementation approach, and (iii) a CE tool portfolio. Implementation of the three level framework has started successfully at Tickford Engineering Ltd., which is a typical and fast growing supplier to the automotive industry.

CAE Systems for Gear Design and Manufacturing as Concurrent Engineering Tool.

It is very important to select proper material and heat treatment process for gear manufacturing. If the manufacturing conditions can be optimized in the design stage before catual trials, the total cost and lead-time can be reduced drastically. In this study, CAE systems have been developed for gear design and manufacturing by considering concurrent engineering approach. The systems are based on mathematical models for thermo-elasto-plastic behaviors during heat treatment. The objective is to predict microstructure and hardness distribution, as well as distortion and residual stresses quantitatively in design stage. A parameter such as a ratio of the fatigue strength and stresses occurred during engaging is proposed to evaluate gear strength. The fatigue strength can be estimated from calculated hardness and residual stresses considering non-metallic inclusions. In addition, a specific pre-and post-processor have been developed for user friendly operation. The calculated results of test pieces and practical gears are in good agreement with experimental ones. Finally, several examples have been reported to show that these CAE systems are useful for practical work.

Design standards for effective MCM design

MCM design requires many elements of both IC and printed circuit board (PCB) design. The combination of industry standards and well developed processes is yielding excellent design systems for leading electronics firms. The MCM industry, however, is lacking many of the standards necessary for creating effective design systems. Significant efforts need to be made to overcome major shortcomings in industry infrastructure, concurrent engineering, staff expertise, and design tools. The current state of MCM design is assessed using the IC design process as an positive example. Significant industry investment has yielded enormous gains in IC design productivity, time-to-market, and functional costs. The electronic packaging industry can benefit from similar approaches. Successful MCM design first requires a standard method for modeling all of the elements in a design, including the components, substrates, assembly processes, and performance requirements. Data for these models must be gathered from a wide range of sources; it is not unusual on a single design to receive information from 20 manufacturers. Since data gathering is very time-consuming, these models should be available before starting actual designs. The paper gives detailed examples of specific issues concerning modeling components, substrates, and assemblies. Systems for capturing die data, substrate design rules, and assembly design rules are described. These systems are being used in work conducted as part of the IMAPS' Ceramic Interconnect Initiative. The results of developing and using design standards will be significant: better products built at lower cost and brought to market quickly.

Tools and teams: competing models of integrated product development project performance

Three models of the relationship between the tools and methods of integrated product development or concurrent engineering (CE) and project task performance are specified and tested on an international, multi-industry sample of CE project teams. The three models drawn from the literature are, respectively, a `linear independence' CE tools model, a `reciprocal interaction' CE tools model, and a `serial' CE tools plus intervening team effectiveness model. Comparison of the model tests lends support to a composite, serial multipath specification where both team effectiveness and the CE methods for increasing development process simultaneity contribute directly to project performance and mediate the contributions of other CE tools. Team effectiveness was higher for teams using CE tools and methods which standardize engineering methodologies. The use of simultaneity methods was higher for project teams using some other CE tools. CE Tools for data integration and for increased customer input made no contribution to project task performance. The model specifying an interactive synergy between the tools and methods of CE was the least successful. Most of the benefits from the tools and methods of CE can be achieved by focusing implementation effort on increasing simultaneity in the development process and improving team decision-making effectiveness.