CE techniques that worked and resulting benefits in small
and large companies and a Reprinted with permission from May 1997 Engineering Department Management & Administration Report (EDMAR), Copyright 1997 Institute of Management & Administration, Inc., 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 |
Concurrent engineering continues to be a preferred best practice among engineering managers who are working to improve their new product design and development process. According to a recent EDMAR reader study, 28.5% of the respondents indicate that they have implemented concurrent engineering concepts during the past 12 months. Far more interesting, however, are the demographics of the survey. It finds that engineering leaders in both smaller organizations (less than 500 employees) and larger entities are applying this practice in almost equal proportions. This is identical to the result found in last year's EDMAR study.
Many readers have taken time when responding to elaborate in some detail about their experiences with concurrent engineering. We share the lessons they've learned, and the results that have been achieved.
Design project time has been reduced by up to 30% since concurrent engineering adopted. "Concurrent engineering has enabled us to do more in less time with limited resources," proclaims a product engineering manager at a midsize producer of air distribution equipment. "Before adapting concurrent engineering principles to our specific situation, we conducted a through review of department practices to eliminate activities that don't add value."
Based on this review, the company decided to move ahead with concurrent engineering practices based on project teams and supported by new and/or upgraded engineering software. "This combination has significantly reduced the time it now takes our product development teams to complete projects," he reports. Individual project cycle times have been reduced a minimum of 10%, with the largest to date experiencing a 30% savings.
Cross-functional team efforts slash product redesign by more than one-half. "We implemented concurrent engineering processes for a new product we wanted to develop and had a truly cross-functional team from engineering, manufacturing engineering, purchasing, and production," details the engineering manager at a small facility manufacturing ground support systems for the airline industry. "The specific project was very successful and went through the manufacturing process very well," he declares. One major benefit reported by the manager was in slicing redesign by 60%.
Impact of concurrent engineering efforts continues to pay dividends, almost a year later. The engineering director at a small facility producing industrial motor controls shares, "Our last major product release eight months ago was designed by using concurrent engineering principles, and has resulted in significantly lower manufacturing and field failures. This has allowed our engineering staff to focus more energy on developing newer designs, rather than correcting existing faults," the director explains.
Before implementing concurrent engineering, "steps" had to be taken to ensure it happened. Everything doesn't always go smoothly when introducing concurrent engineering into an organization, several readers note. One engineering manager at a midsize producer of fuel systems put it plainly: "It took aggressive action to ensure that concurrent engineering would happen in a non-adversarial form." The plan, he explained, called for the creation of teams and teamwork, which many engineers and others in non-engineering activities opposed.
"This required more coaching on our part to raise morale and get participants to have some feeling of ownership in the project," he acknowledged. "Previously, we simply moved the project to the engineer with the most skill for that phase." Concurrent engineering is now "always a part of new product release, and it's working well," the engineering manager shared.
Too many changes, too many cost overruns leads one director to consider concurrent engineering. "We're in a market-driven industry," a director of engineering based in Pennsylvania replied, "yet we were suffering from too many changes in the middle of the program because we just weren't devoting enough time to feasibility studies and other analyses in the front end of the project." Once the company adopted concurrent engineering, the number of changes fell and the resultant cost overruns also "withered."
Once manufacturing became involved, the complaints faded. A small producer of refrigeration compressors sought to link design engineering, quality control and manufacturing engineering into a concurrent engineering team. "Organizing three separate functions into a team to work together was one of my biggest challenges," admits the organization's engineering manager. "It took a combination of cajoling and threats, but we finally got the manufacturing people heavily involved in the design phase," the manager reports.
"Now we co-locate our concurrent engineering teams as we find that they perform best away from their individual work areas," the engineering manager comments. "Since then, manufacturing's complaints have subsided, and the product is easier to put into production."
Balancing concurrent engineering's learning curve while trying to maintain productivity. `My engineers are just getting comfortable with the software, and we're beginning to realize the potential of concurrent engineering," explains the engineering vice president at a midsize producer of transportation equipment. "The learning curve involved in trying to introduce concurrent engineering practice while also attempting to maintain productivity was originally a challenge," he acknowledged. His solution: "I decided to implement concurrent engineering in small, manageable bites. We also made a not-too-insignificant investment in new hardware and CAD software to help this process along."
DFM/A techniques foster concurrent engineering efforts. "We adopted a design for manufacturing/assembly strategy for our concurrent engineering process," explains an electrical engineering manager at a facility producing aircraft components. "We now have thorough design reviews and manufacturing involvement at the design concept and definition stages," he says. "Since starting this strategy, we have noticed a reduction in the number of requested engineering changes and ECNs on production drawings."
Summing up - CE in Practice
For faster product development, fewer changes: