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BACKGROUND There is an increasing awareness that ´time to market´ is the key competitive issue in the manufacturing industry today. The global markets are demanding products that are well designed, are of high quality and are at low prices with ever decreasing lead times. Hence manufacturers are forced to utilize the best methods of technology with efficient control and management accompanied by suitably enabling organizational structures. Concurrent engineering (CE) is widely seen to be the methodology that can help satisfy these strenuous demands and keep the profitability and viability of product developers, manufacturers and suppliers high. There have been many reported successes of CE in practice. Rover were able to launch Land Rover Discovery in 18 months as compared with 48-63 months for similar products in Europe. Because of its early introduction to the market it became the best selling product in its class. AT&T report part counts down to one ninth of their previous levels and quality one hundred times (in surface defects) for VLSI (very improvements of large scale integration) circuits as a result of using the CE approach. WHO SHOULD READ THIS TEXT? This book will aim to provide a sound basis for the very diverse subject known as concurrent engineering. Concurrent engineering is recognized by an increasingly large proportion of the manufacturing industry as a necessity in order to compete in today´s markets. This recognition has created the demand for information, awareness and training in good concurrent engineering practice.

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One Concurrent Engineering: Concepts, Definitions and Issues.- 1 Introduction to concurrent engineering.- 2 Concurrent engineering case studies: lessons from Ford Motor Company experience.- Organizational and managerial issues.- Design maturity.- Two Essential Techniques for Concurrent Engineering.- 5 Quality function deployment: an overview.- 6 Design for manufacture.- Design for assembly.- Rapid prototyping of physical parts.- Rapid prototyping of software and hybrid systems.- Three Product Design, Support and Management Tools for Concurrent Engineering.- 10 Software tools for the product development process.- 11 The role of knowledge-based systems in concurrent engineering.- 12 Software solutions for concurrent engineering II.- 13 Strategies for concurrent engineering and sources of further information.

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