A workbook-based methodology for implementing concurrent engineering

Concurrent Engineering demands a new way of working and many organisations experience difficulty during implementation. The research described in this paper has the aim to develop a paper-based workbook style methodology that companies can use to increase the benefits generated by Concurrent Engineering, while reducing implementation costs, risk and time. The three-stage methodology provides guidance based on knowledge accumulated from implementation experience and best practitioners. It encourages companies to learn to manage their Concurrent Engineering implementation by taking actions which expose them to new and valuable experiences. This helps to continuously improve understanding of how to maximise the benefits from Concurrent Engineering. The methodology is particularly designed to cater for organisational and contextual uniqueness, as Concurrent Engineering implementations will vary from company to company. Using key actions which improve the Concurrent Engineering implementation process, individual companies can develop their own 'best practice' for product development. The methodology ensures that key implementation issues, which are primarily human and organisational, are addressed using simple but proven techniques. This paper describes the key issues that the majority of companies face when implementing Concurrent Engineering. The structure of the methodology is described to show how the issues are addressed and resolved. The key actions used to improve the Concurrent Engineering implementation process are explained and their inclusion in the implementation methodology described. Relevance to industry. Implementation of Concurrent Engineering concepts in manufacturing industry has not been a straightforward process. This paper describes a workbook-style tool that manufacturing companies can use to accelerate and improve their Concurrent Engineering implementation. © 1995.

COGENT: Implementing a successful vehicle manufacturer/supplier co-development initiative

Over 100 suppliers have now taken part in an initiative built to improve joint design and development performance of tier one suppliers and one vehicle manufacturer. Significant targets were set - 30 % cost down and 30% faster design time with 40% less development budget - and achieved An analysis of the initiative was used to determine the critical success factors. These include significant detail findings in the areas of performance measurement and alignment of development processes. Equal attention is given to understanding how co-development can be implemented and the paper will present findings related to objectivity, perception of partners and partnerships. Copyright © 2002 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.

Training and assignment of multi-skilled workers for implementing seru production systems

Confronted with high variety and low volume market demands, many companies, especially the Japanese electronics manufacturing companies, have reconfigured their conveyor assembly lines and adopted seru production systems. Seru production system is a new type of work-cell-based manufacturing system. A lot of successful practices and experience show that seru production system can gain considerable flexibility of job shop and high efficiency of conveyor assembly line. In implementing seru production, the multi-skilled worker is the most important precondition, and some issues about multi-skilled workers are central and foremost. In this paper, we investigate the training and assignment problem of workers when a conveyor assembly line is entirely reconfigured into several serus. We formulate a mathematical model with double objectives which aim to minimize the total training cost and to balance the total processing times among multi-skilled workers in each seru. To obtain the satisfied task-to-worker training plan and worker-to-seru assignment plan, a three-stage heuristic algorithm with nine steps is developed to solve this mathematical model. Then, several computational cases are taken and computed by MATLAB programming. The computation and analysis results validate the performances of the proposed mathematical model and heuristic algorithm. © 2013 Springer-Verlag London.