What is the role of Concurrent Engineering in Product Design Cycle?

Product design is a very important activity. Many factors are to be considered in product design that includes the user requirements, marketability and manufacturing ease. The major focus in product design is the functionality and performance while other factors needs to be consider for ease of its manufacturing and cost reduction. It is estimated that 70% to 80% of the cost of product development and manufacturing is estimated at the initial design stages.

Traditional Engineering involves the design and manufacturing activity sequentially. The designers spend their efforts and time in the various aspects of design and they prepare detailed drawings for manufacturing.  The drawings are forwarded to materials department that arrange the material blanks required for manufacturing. The drawings are sent to manufacturing department where these drawings are reviewed and the manufacturing process required is identified. This sequential approach seems to be logical and simple, but in practice many difficulties are encountered.  The difficulties may involve sourcing of the required material for manufacturing or the modification in drawings for ease of manufacturing. These queries from other departments related to manufacturing are sent to design department for review and decision. This not only increases the cost but also wastes a lot of time.

The concept of Concurrent Engineering is to reduce the cost and time in product design and manufacturing. Concurrent Engineering is also called simultaneous engineering; it is a systematic approach that integrates the design and manufacturing of products with the goal of optimizing all the elements involved in the life cycle of the product. Life cycle of a product generally involves design, development, production, distribution, use and repair of the product. Concurrent Engineering minimizes the product design and engineering changes. It also reduces the time and costs required to transform the conceptual design into production and delivery to the customer. To fulfill the goals of Concurrent Engineering all disciplines work together in the early design states and stages progress concurrently, hence saving cost and time as the problems that are recognized at a later stage in Traditional Engineering are identified at earlier stages of the product design. Communication between the related disciplines plays a vital role for Concurrent Engineering without which this approach cannot be applied to Product Design.