Implementation of concurrent engineering in the suppliers to the ...

Journal of Materials Processing Technology 107 (2000) 201±208

Implementation of concurrent engineering in the suppliers to the automotive industry J.X. Gao*, B.M. Manson, P. Kyratsis School of Industrial and Manufacturing Science, Cran®eld University, Cran®eld, Bedford MK 43 OAL, UK

Abstract 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 justi®ed 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 justi®able 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 ®ve 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. # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Concurrent engineering; Automotive suppliers; CAD/CAM/CAE

1. Introduction In the automotive industry, the traditional product development had as its main characteristic the partition of the organisations into departments and the specialisation of the employees [1]. All the procedures were sequential and the trend was to complete 100% of each stage before performing the next. In this approach a large number of modi®cations had to be made in the later stages of the product development cycle, which proved very time consuming, expensive and dif®cult. The automotive industry now faces greater market pressure to develop high quality products more quickly, at lower costs and to satisfy more sophisticated and demanding customers. To overcome the above problems a concurrent engineering (CE) approach has been introduced and implemented by large companies or original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). CE is a philosophy, not a technology, and as a concept is not new [2]. The new element resides in the systematic way of implementing the concept. CE tries to knock down the departmental barriers and make people communicate during the whole product development cycle. *

Corresponding author.

It encourages specialists in every department to contribute their knowledge and experience to the project in order to prevent problems. CE ensures that all activities start as soon as possible, work in parallel and effectively shorten the overall product development processes [3]. The actual design process tends to take longer with CE than with traditional methods because additional issues are evaluated in more detail, but this will result in an overall improved quality, better product de®nition and an time reduction [4]. It should be noted that to date the vast majority of CE research work was devoted to issues relevant to OEMs as traditionally they carry out most tasks of new vehicle development. Today large companies outsource a great deal of high level engineering work to suppliers so that every company can use its resources in the areas it has technical expertise. This has created a new problem as smaller suppliers are left behind in terms of introducing new approach such as CE, and adopting new technologies such as computer aided engineering (CAE). The costs are substantial to smaller suppliers, especially when they have contracts with different OEMs who use different approaches and CAE tools. This project aims to propose and implement a CE framework speci®cally for automotive suppliers.

0924-0136/00/$ ± see front matter # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 2 4 - 0 1 3 6 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 6 6 9 - 5

202

J.X. Gao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 107 (2000) 201±208

2. Approaches to CE There are basically two approaches to the implementation of CE, i.e., the team-based and the computer-based approach [5]. In the ®rst approach, team members are selected from different functional areas such as design, manufacturing, production and marketing. They contribute to the product design and identify early dif®culties and problems that the design may have. In this way the multidisciplinary team prevents a series of changes from occurring at the ®nal stages of product development. The second approach focuses on computer-based systems, which can provide an integrated design environment in which the tools can interact, transfer data and co-operate with each other. As a result, the product can be optimised according to different criteria following a virtual product development cycle. A number of existing frameworks based on the two basic approaches are discussed below. 2.1. Cran®eld CIM Institute's framework The Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) Institute of Cran®eld University has developed a framework focusing on multidisciplinary product development teams as the main vehicle for successful CE implementation [6,7]. The framework consists of three stages as shown in Fig. 1. Stage one is mainly a preparation phase during which the senior management is introduced to the CE philosophy. They will identify what actions to take in order to create a supportive and effective multidisciplinary team environment. Then a pilot project and team members are selected. In stage two, the

senior management and the team together de®ne the strategy and execute the pilot project. All the members of the team have a clear understanding of their working environment and every source of future con¯ict is eliminated. During the third stage, the team reviews the pilot project and, based on the experience acquired, proposes process changes and structural improvements. Training needs are also identi®ed and CE expands to the rest of the organisation. The framework suggests continuous improvement within the company. The team will look for ways to improve the whole product development process, while the senior management will change the organisational infrastructure to support these new processes. This framework is based completely on teams, but there is no comment on tools and practical techniques to be used. It does not provide details as to the actual steps necessary to progress using this particular approach. 2.2. The product complexity based framework This framework is based on the complexity of products a company develops, which can be divided into internal complexity (from the manufacturing point of view) and external complexity (from the end users/customer point of view) [8]. Four main categories are used to represent the product complexity, i.e., (a) component driven products (high internal complexity, low external complexity), (b) simple products (low internal and external complexity), (c) customer driven products (high external complexity, low internal complexity), and (d) complex product (high internal and external complexity). The framework also

Fig. 1. The CIM Institute's CE framework.

J.X. Gao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 107 (2000) 201±208

identi®es four factors to represent the company's resources, i.e., people, processes, tools and techniques, and formal methods. Depending on the complexity of the products, the framework proposes different ways of implementing CE strategies and recommends suitable tools that should be used in each case. For example, for companies producing simple products (category a), there is no demand for sophisticated tools. It is unlikely that these companies will use multidisciplinary teams. For companies producing a lot of components and sub-systems (category b), ef®cient teamwork is very important, and integrated CAE systems and formal methods are essential. For ®rms dealing with customers' demands and trying to translate them into engineering products (category c), i.e., low design complexity and high customers' requirements, techniques such as quality function deployment (QFD) and design for manufacturing (DFM) are very important. For ®rms which have to cope with the most complex problems (category d), they have to combine the latest technology in computers with multidisciplinary teamwork. Extensive use of formal methods is crucial as well. In summary this framework differentiates the companies according to the complexity of their products, and provides a general picture of the tools to be used depending on the category the company belongs to. But it does not provide additional information as to how to use these tools in a company environment. 2.3. The Design Council's framework The framework proposed by Backhouse and Brooks [9] also encompasses the concept that different CE solutions are necessary for different companies. The methodology describes the global market forces that drive companies to adopt a CE approach and the elements that form the resources of a CE environment as shown in Fig. 2. The forces in Fig. 2 are ef®ciency (shorter time, lower cost and higher quality), focus (strong leadership towards a speci®c direction), pro®ciency (the company's capabilities and expertise in the development of speci®c products), radical innovation (introduction of new products with new

203

technology or in response to a competitor's new product), and incremental change (improvement and updates). The elements of the resources are structures (traditional hierarchical or multidisciplinary teams), process (sequential or parallel), control (the way that projects are planned and executed), people (with speci®c skills), and tools (CAE and design procedures). The framework can be used as an aid to highlight the various key issues that should be addressed in any CE implementation. As it is very general and abstract this leaves the companies' management free to implement CE in their own way. However, the methodology does not provide structured guidelines and tips on the implementation aspects within companies. The case studies used demonstrate how the adoption of CE can vary from one company to another. 2.4. The PACE consortium framework The practical approach to concurrent engineering (PACE) consortium developed a generic framework based on step by step management change [10] which contains seven basic steps, i.e., develop a strategy, assessment, create the culture, prioritised improvement, plan and change, implement improved situation, and support implementation. Every step encompasses its key elements for implementation. A company should analyse its business objectives and the reason for change. A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis should be used to de®ne the company's targets. A further analysis of people, technology, tools and processes involved in the company will identify the company's bottlenecks. Training has been identi®ed as a crucial element for cultural change. The rate of change must be planned very carefully, ensuring constant progress feedback. If deviations from the plan occur during implementation, the initial plan must be changed to incorporate these deviations. At all stages top management support is extremely important, and must provide necessary funds and technical support. After the initial establishment of a CE environment it is crucial for the company to commit to continuing improvement. This framework provides a more practical guide for the senior management to recognise the necessity of CE and advice and tips necessary to progress with the CE implementation. But it does not give detailed guidance of what tools and techniques to be used. 2.5. Technology focused approach

Fig. 2. The Design Council's CE framework.

Some companies have followed different paths in the introduction of CE. These companies are usually experts in advanced technological areas [11]. They all adopt the general CE concepts and principles, but they pay a great deal of attention to the tools used for completing the projects. The extensive application of CAE technologies is necessary so that the maximum design optimisation can be achieved prior to initial prototype production. The main feature of such an approach is based on the overall system integration during

204

J.X. Gao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 107 (2000) 201±208

the design process. The product is delivered in a comparable time to the `®rst version of a product to be optimised later' in the traditional cycle. The advantages are that: (i) the need for later ®re ®ghting is dramatically reduced, (ii) the prototype is very unlikely to fail because of the virtual tests already carried out, and (iii) the whole design performance and integrity have already been evaluated. 2.6. Summary of the above approaches In examining the frameworks described above it is noted that they have addressed different aspects of CE with different degrees of detail for each aspect (environment, implementation framework and tools necessary). They share the following similarities: (i) use of multifunctional teams as the basis of the implementation, (ii) top management's support and employees' active participation as pre-requisite, (iii) careful plan of CE implementation, (iv) use of a pilot project as a starting point, and (v) training of the employees in the new philosophy and tools. Although some frameworks have differentiated companies in terms of their resources and product complexity, none of them differentiate between the introduction of CE in OEMs 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.

3. The proposed CE framework for suppliers As OEMs now pass a great deal of work to suppliers, the product development cycle can spread around sites all over the world. To improve collaboration within the supply chain, OEMs are trying to reduce the number of suppliers and actively involve the remaining ones in the development process. These issues have a remarkable effect on the way that a CE philosophy can be implemented. In practice the suppliers are selected by the OEMs, and they must comply with the way that the OEMs have decided to run the product development processes. This research has proposed a three level CE framework speci®cally for the suppliers to the automotive industry. As shown in Fig. 3, the ®rst level identi®es the changes and future trends in the product development cycle. It recognises the impact of the OEM's decisions on the suppliers and describes the environment in which suppliers have to operate. The second level consists of the framework itself, based on the special needs and problems of the suppliers. The third level concentrates on the creation of a tool portfolioused in a CE environment. 3.1. The environment The outer layer of Fig. 3 illustrates the constituent elements of the environment in which automotive suppliers

Fig. 3. The three level CE framework for the suppliers to the automotive industry.

J.X. Gao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 107 (2000) 201±208

operate. The automotive industry has entered a new era of competition. Companies have to produce higher quality products at lower costs and less time-to-market, and respond to the changing customer demands and government legislations quickly. The widespread use of state-of-the-art internet technology and computerised tools, such as computer aided design and manufacture (CAD/CAM), product data management (PDM) and various CAE systems, have proven successful, and this has led to a new concept of virtual product development (VPD). OEMs are pushing their whole supply chain to adopt similar technologies and to be part of their VPD process. Traditionally suppliers follow the `build and break' approach as they could not afford sophisticated and specialised CAE tools for a particular OEM customer. This situation leads to companies which had developed speci®c areas of expertise but are not interested in the integration of their work with OEMs or other suppliers. As a consequence, remodelling components is an everyday practice. The delays caused are very severe when every supplier uses its own software packages with different ®le formats and speci®cations. There are also cultural barriers to CE implementation. Senior management of suppliers normally expect quick bene®ts when considering investment a large amount of resources. This cannot be the case for CE implementation as it takes time and the bene®ts normally become clear later than expected. Most employees are reluctant to change the way they used to work. Therefore, it is the top management's responsibility to constantly control and encourage the transition from the traditional practice to concurrent engineering, and to adopt emerging new technologies so that they can play a new role in the new business environment. 3.2. The framework The middle layer of Fig. 3 represents the CE framework itself consisting of a ®ve stage guide. In the ®rst stage the top management should identify the need for a change. It is worth mentioning that in the case of the suppliers this is not negotiable as the OEMs they are linked to have moved to CE. Nevertheless, it is a good practice when the supplier identi®es this need internally. CE knowledge is then captured by studying existing theories, case studies, frameworks and guidelines or even by buying some consultancy services. The quality of available resources (people, technology, processes) is assessed and a SWOT analysis is carried out in order to identify the company's position (strengths and weaknesses) within the changing world, and the opportunities and threats arising out of taking actions or not. Then a structured strategic plan based on business objectives and clear targets are clearly de®ned with predicted savings in time and cost. It should be recognised that a long-term attitude must be adopted, as it is very common for companies to start ambitious re-engineering programmes and after the excitement is gone, everything returns to `normal'.

205

In the second stage, the top management assigns one of its members or an external person as the full time CE champion responsible for the transformation. The champion starts informing all levels of the company about the bene®ts of the changes by setting up debates, presentations or seminars. He will assess the company resources and start re-engineering the organisational and decision making procedures, and promote communication practices within the company. A multidisciplinary team will then be created, and extra attention must be paid to the way that the team is created, organised and guided. The presence of members from a variety of disciplines enhances the amount of knowledge available during a project and stimulates the exchange of views and opinions. Although each member's expertise is mainly needed at speci®c times, continuous member involvement ensures continuity of assent to all decision making procedures during the product development cycle. If possible team members should be co-located. The size of the team is very important as well, especially for smaller suppliers. Therefore members should have multiple skills to cover more than one aspect of the team's requirements. A team leader should be selected who is able to create a clear vision of the team's purpose and de®ne the criteria for success. The leader's technical competence should be recognised by the team members, but the main issue is to be able to appreciate the range of viewpoints of all the team members. The leader's mission is to manage the team decision making process rather than make team decisions. In the third stage, the top management and the multifunctional team select pilot projects as the ®rst attempt to follow CE practice. Although the pilot projects are normally of small scale, the impact of success on the company is substantial. The team is responsible for developing realistic project plans, clear targets and management milestones within the company's policy and guidelines as stated by senior management. At later stages the initial plan can be reviewed if necessary in order to make adjustments to suit current conditions. Any deviations from the plan should be recorded following the existing quality assurance procedures. More resources should be committed at the beginning of the project. This means that the personnel should be available, trained properly and given the necessary tools. At the end of the successful pilot project the team members will have acquired experience and con®dence, and will propose further changes in procedures, training, human behaviour and tools. In the fourth stage, it is suggested that the company should continue running relatively small pilot projects whilst gradually increasing their size. During these projects the improvements suggested in the past start to become part of the people's culture. The extensive use of the latter will allow the staff to get to know different techniques and various tools. At the end of every project, the team should report to the top management their experiences and propose improvements for the future. It is then time for the top

206

J.X. Gao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 107 (2000) 201±208

management to decide to expand the CE practice to larger and more complicated projects. The ®fth stage of the framework deals with continuous improvement and people's involvement. People who have experience in CE practice from previous projects should pass their experience and expertise to the rest of the company's staff. The teams involved in different projects should be slowly renewed so that the experience is spread within the company, whilst at the same time the performance of the teams is not affected. It is the duty of the management and the employees to continue searching for ways to improve the processes and use the tools available more effectively. 3.3. The tool portfolio The inner layer of Fig. 3 shows the recommended tools and techniques. But they should not be considered as the only tools available. Design for manufacture and assembly (DFMA) is a technique used to ensure that the ®nal design will be easy to manufacture and assemble. In order to practice DFMA consistently, the multidisciplinary team involved should understand the manufacturing methods, processes and capabilities of the company. Large companies have already developed very sophisticated procedures for DFMA, whilst smaller companies cannot follow the same processes because they have limited resources. It is therefore recommended that the use DFMA tool can initially be based on guidelines which can be found in the literature [12,13]. Each company may subtract or reinforce some of these guidelines depending on its needs. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a tool used for recognising and translating customers requirements into engineering terminology using the expertise of members of the multidisciplinary team [14]. It is very important to identify who are the customers from the suppliers point of view. It is recommended that the end users (drivers of vehicles) are regarded as customers. Therefore their requirements should be considered together with OEMs product speci®cations. Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) can be described as the sum of systematic activities intended to recognise and evaluate the potential failure of a product or process and its effects, and identify actions which could eliminate or reduce the chance of potential failure occurring [15]. It is complementary to the design process and de®nes positively what a design must do to satisfy the customer. In order to maximise its use and bene®ts, every design and process modi®cation must be investigated and the FMEA must be updated. Rapid prototyping (RP) is a technique that produces a physical prototype model by dividing the 3D CAD model of a part into horizontal cross-sections and then transforming them, layer by layer, into a physical model [16]. This has replaced the traditional building and testing of physical prototypes, and speed up the veri®cation and tooling processes of the product development cycle. Statistical process control (SPC) uses quality control ¯owcharts to monitor, control, evaluate

and analyse a parameter or process to determine whether it performs consistently up to its capability [17]. The goal of SPC is initially to achieve stable and predictable process performance. After the process has been brought under control, the method aims to improve the process in order to achieve an acceptable level of product variation. Design of experiments (DoE) is a way of carefully structuring an experiment and selecting the test points which will provide the information needed with the minimum number of tests [18]. It is normally used to evaluate multivariable problems with complex interactions between variables. The modelling process also allows areas of interest not to be tested in the actual experiments so as to minimise effort of investigation. Project management techniques are also very important as a large number of different activities are normally carried out in parallel in a CE environment. In every CE project it is necessary for the multidisciplinary team to break the workload down into simple activities. These activities are charted in a logical order and their duration is evaluated [19]. 4. Implementation of the framework The proposed CE framework is being implemented on the two sites of Tickford Engineering Ltd., based in Milton Keynes (UK), i.e., the Vehicle Technical Centre and the Engines Technical Centre. The former focuses on niche vehicle conversions and manufacture, vehicle test and development, powertrain packaging and installation, chassis engineering and composites manufacture. The latter is involved in air¯ow management, emissions control and management technologies and application management for spark ignition and compression ignition engines. The company is a part of the world-wide Tickford Group, which employs more than 400 people and provide expertise, products and services to almost all larger vehicle manufacturers. The company is following the ®ve stage implementation guide as shown in the middle layer of Fig. 3. At ®rst, the top management assigned a senior vehicles manager and a CAE engineer responsible for the execution of a strategic SWOT analysis together with an overall assessment of the company's resources. As a result, Ford Motor Company was identi®ed as the main OEM which brings almost 40% of Tickford's projects. As Ford uses SDRC-IDEAS Master Series across the whole company and its suppliers, Tickford has to follow and invest in the appropriate hardware and software. This decision was further supported by the increasing number of projects from companies that were guided or owned by Ford, e.g., Jaguar and Aston Martin. Although many engineers still use 2D systems, 3D solid modellers were identi®ed as the future in vehicle design. CATIA was selected as the second system because of the company's strong link with CATIA users such as BMW. Use of CAE software for up-front virtual testing was recognised as one of the crucial future areas that the company should invest more.

J.X. Gao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 107 (2000) 201±208

The company's traditional approach was project execution oriented, in which a new project is started without making the best use of the experience acquired from previous ones. Furthermore, the culture within the company was to avoid spending more time at the beginning of the project on design issues. The strategy was to start modelling components directly and solving any dif®culties later by changing the previous designs. The manufacturing implications of the design were addressed by the experience of individual designers rather than in a formal way. These issues were highlighted as very important and need to be tackled. Because of the company's small size compared to the large OEMs and the variety of projects undertaken, the ¯exibility of manpower is considered of great importance. Broad knowledge of a number of engineering areas with a background in manufacturing issues was identi®ed as ideal for the company's needs. The adoption of a CE approach was considered as the only path to follow. The CAE engineer was also assigned to gather as much information as possible about the CE philosophy, which was part of the knowledge background necessary in order to proceed with the CE implementation. The proposed three level CE framework (Fig. 3) was then presented to the top management and has been agreed. The company set up a general target of 40% reduction in the cost of product development, together with a 40% reduction in design changes during the execution of a project in a 3-year period. The pilot projected was a major project that Tickford is currently undertaking, i.e., the design and manufacture of gas conversions of a series of Ford vehicles. During a major project like this the measurement of the time and cost per model could be compared with each other. It is especially the case with regard to converting the current model and its future new version, where the comparison will be more accurate. Then the top management assigned to the vehicles manager and the CAE engineer as the Champion Team responsible for the project responsible for the cultural transformation of the organisation. The champion team started informing all levels of the hierarchy about the introduction of a different philosophy. The process included both formal presentations and informal meetings where it was explained why there was a need for a different approach, what CE means in practice and what tools are used. Furthermore the team made clear that the decision on CE implementation within the company should and will progress because it is crucial for the future of the company. It was also stressed that the company's top management strongly supported this procedure as the only way for the future. In comparison with the OEM's strategy with respect to selecting its ®rst tier suppliers, Tickford proceeded and drew up a list of suppliers which could meet its requirements. The selected suppliers agreed to adopt a similar approach in order to secure increased quality at lower cost, at the same time they will try to integrate their quality techniques with Tickford's. The practice of organising multidisciplinary

207

teams was very well known within the company. Tickford ensures that its employees have a broad background in engineering and experience in project management and as a result, the formation and operation of multidisciplinary teams is common practice. The role of the team leader is covered by the technical managers who are responsible for each project. The criteria for selecting these technical managers was based on their technical, managerial and interpersonal skills. They are widely accepted as successful team leaders and there is no doubt about their abilities to run the projects effectively. The size of the teams could not be standardised but is de®ned by the team leader in collaboration with the rest of the team members. This is due to the fact that the different projects that a team is involved in can vary depending on their size. The company always encourages every team which works on a project to be located in the same of®ce, the dif®culties in successful operation of multidisciplinary teams encountered by many other companies were limited in Tickford. A team of engineers is responsible for keeping the employees informed of legislation issues and changes. This is very important to Tickford because of the different vehicle design areas it works in and the global nature of its business. A considerable proportion of the company's annual expenditure is directed to staff training. Especially in this instance a great number of design and component engineers were trained in the use of the new CAE packages introduced into the company. At the same time, because of the adoption of the tool portfolio as the basis for the company's CE infrastructure, more training was arranged for the team members and team leaders. The training scheme involved out-of-work training, following courses and workshops, on-work training by actually using the tools and the sponsoring of research and learning activities in collaboration with the academic society. The implementation of CE is not without dif®culties. The company faced cultural and practical dif®culties but it is expected that as time passes and the cultural transformation takes place, this will lead to improved performance and limited problems. The most dif®cult issue was to convince the employees that the delay at the beginning would shorten the required overall development time. Although the company invested in state-of-the-art CAD/ CAM packages, extensive translation of data from `old' systems to the new were necessary. In a number of cases the OEMs had not even provided the necessary information in the format of the new systems as agreed. Nevertheless, the company recognised that the current situation is part of the transition from the previous generation CAD/CAM systems to the new and its employees tried to optimise the amount of CAD data translation needed. Finally, the development of the supplier's framework was proven to be an extremely useful guide for CE implementation within Tickford Engineering. The whole process continues and in the future it is expected that projects will run in a fully CE environment.

208

J.X. Gao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 107 (2000) 201±208

5. Conclusions An extensive investigation on appropriate CE frameworks and tools has been carried out and a three level CE framework for the suppliers to the automotive industry has been proposed, which consists of the environment in which the suppliers operate, a basic CE implementation framework with guidelines, and a CE tool portfolio. Tickford Engineering Ltd., sponsored this project and proceeded towards implementing the proposed framework. A number of procedures were incorporated into the company's quality system whilst more are still in preparation. During the process of implementing the proposed framework it became clear that it might be necessary to divide automotive suppliers into two main categories, i.e., those who are involved with similar projects all the time and those who carry out a number of projects in different areas. An early evaluation was conducted in order to measure the improvements achieved and dif®culties faced. A number of different brainstorming sessions were conducted with Tickford's staff. During these sessions it became clear that the company started to change the way it was operating. More time was spent before actually starting designing but less time and resources were used overall. The evaluation conducted included both quantitative and qualitative issues. Furthermore, most staff involved said they expected further improved performance by using the new philosophy in the future. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the sponsoring company Tickford Engineering Ltd., and all its staff involved in the implementation of the proposed CE framework, especially Mr. David Boulton (Vehicle Manager) for his support throughout the project. References [1] H.C. Zhang, D. Zhang, Concurrent engineering: an overview from manufacturing engineering perspectives, Concurrent Eng.: Res. Appl. 3 (3) (September 1995).

[2] J.R. Hartley, Concurrent engineering: shortening lead times, raising quality, lowering costs, Industrial Newsletters, Dunstable, UK, 1990. [3] J. Cullin, Time compression, Manuf. Eng. (October 1996). [4] D. Clausing, Total Quality Development, ASME Press, New York, 1994. [5] H. Jo Hyeon, H.R. Parsei, W.G. Sullivan, Principles of concurrent engineering, in: H.R. Parsei, W.G. Sullivan (Eds.), Concurrent Engineering, Chapman & Hall, London, 1993. [6] F. Lettice, Concurrent engineering: a team-based approach to rapid implementation, Ph.D. Thesis, Cran®eld University, Cran®eld, Bedford, UK, March 1995. [7] S. Evans, F. Lettice, P. Smart, A faster cheaper and safer route to CE, World Class Des. Manuf. 2 (2) (1995) 10±16. [8] J. Poolton, I. Barclay, Concurrent engineering assessment: a proposed framework, in: Proceedings from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 210, 1996. [9] C.J. Backhouse, N. Brookes, Concurrent Engineering: What's Working Where, The Design Council, Gower Publishing Ltd., London, 1996. [10] H. Driva, K.S. Pawar, The development of a generic framework for the implementation of concurrent engineering, Int. J. Comput. Appl. Technol. 9 (4) (1996). [11] A.V. Smith, R.J.R. Johns, P.M. McNamara, Improving the process of engine design through the integrated application of CAE methods, in: Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. D, Issue D4, March 1995, pp. 259±267. [12] J. Corbet, M. Dooner, J. Meleka, C. Pym, Design for Manufacture Ð Strategies, Principles and Techniques, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1991. [13] G. Boothroyd, P. Dewhurst, W. Knight, Product Design for Manufacturing and Assembly, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1994. [14] N. Kalargeros, A methodology to computerise QFD's application and enhance its integrity purpose and acceptance within the European automotive industry, M.Phil. Thesis, Cran®eld University, Cran®eld, Bedford, UK, 1997. [15] Chrysler Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation, Potential Failure Mode and Effect Analysis: Reference Manual, 1995. [16] M. Fletcher, Prototyping shows its metal, Eureka, June 1998. [17] Chrysler Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation, Statistical Process Control: Reference Manual, 1995. [18] L.W. Condra, Value-Added Management with Design of Experiments, Chapman & Hall, London, 1995. [19] R.J. Levene, Project network analysis, Lecture Notes, Management for Technology, School of Management, Cran®eld University, Cran®eld, Bedford, UK, 1998.