A Risk Analysis Model in Concurrent Engineering Product Development

Concurrent engineering has been widely accepted as a viable strategy for companies to reduce time to market and achieve overall cost savings. This article analyzes various risks and challenges in product development under the concurrent engineering environment. A three‐dimensional early warning approach for product development risk management is proposed by integrating graphical evaluation and review technique (GERT) and failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA). Simulation models are created to solve our proposed concurrent engineering product development risk management model. Solutions lead to identification of key risk controlling points. This article demonstrates the value of our approach to risk analysis as a means to monitor various risks typical in the manufacturing sector. This article has three main contributions. First, we establish a conceptual framework to classify various risks in concurrent engineering (CE) product development (PD). Second, we propose use of existing quantitative approaches for PD risk analysis purposes: GERT, FMEA, and product database management (PDM). Based on quantitative tools, we create our approach for risk management of CE PD and discuss solutions of the models. Third, we demonstrate the value of applying our approach using data from a typical Chinese motor company.     

Engineering change: A theoretical assessment and a case study

The competitive playground where nowadays firms struggle to survive has rapidly become unforeseeable: product life cycle has shrunk, becoming even shorter than in the past, and world-wide market is suffering for a strong customer differentiation which led to an increasingly wide product mix. In this industrial environment, the engineering change process is getting more and more attention throughout the branches of industry, as it appears as a critical process which seeps into the operations management core, thus influencing the overall firm's performances. A brief state-of-the-art in the area of engineering change is firstly presented. Then a proposal of classification and a new methodology for an effective engineering change process management are suggested. The new proposed methodology has been successfully applied to a real-life manufacturing system and the related case study is reported at the end of the paper.     

Decision support tool for lean product and process development

Lean and concurrent engineering (CE) are widely acknowledged business process improvement strategies. These strategies can improve processes, reduce costs, and cut waste enabling organisations to remain competitive. Lean manufacturing offers an enterprise-wide methodology that improves reliability and flexibility while reducing lead-times and inventory carrying costs. Companies in manufacturing and service sectors are focusing on integrating lean manufacturing methodology with other applications, so that, all their systems and processes are aligned. This article proposes a CE framework based on application of information technology and object-oriented methodology for lean manufacturing. This approach expected to give manufacturing companies an extra edge in today's competitive market. A case study is presented in this article to demonstrate the effectiveness of CE framework in a machine tool manufacturing company. CE practice was adopted for new products, to align the systems and processes of the company. Product development lead-time was found to decrease by more than 50% compared to similar development projects carried out by the company. The need for rework was found to be negligible and the development cost was reduced considerably.     

The role of product design in designer-buyer-supplier interface

This paper advocates early supplier involvement in the early phases of product design and development in a concurrent engineering environment. A concurrent engineering environment and the benefits of such involvement are explained in detail. The paper then focuses on facilitating an interface and collaboration among designer, supplier, and buyer at three planning horizons: strategic, intermediate, and tactical with respect to product design and development. A set of propositions and corollaries for each area of interface at each level of planning are proposed. These propositions and corollaries are intended to effectively accomplish the design-based sourcing and early supplier involvement. Then, each proposition is evaluated in practice and the extent of difference from theory to practice is discussed. Finally, concluding remarks and an assessment are presented.     

Internal and External Integration for Product Development: The Contingency Effects of Uncertainty,Equivocality, and Platform Strategy

Effective product development requires firms to unify internal and external participants. As companies attempt to create this integrated environment, two important questions emerge. Does a high level of internal integration lead to a higher level of external integration? In the context of product development, this study considers whether internal integration in the form of concurrent engineering practices affects the level of external integration as manifested by customer integration, supplier product integration, and supplier process integration. External integration, in turn, may influence competitive capabilities, namely product innovation performance and quality performance. Second, using contingency theory, do certain contextual variables moderate the linkages between integration strategy (external and internal) and performance? Specifically, this study considers whether uncertainty, equivocality, and platform development strategy change the relationships among internal integration, external integration, and competitive capabilities. Data collected from 244 manufacturing firms across several industries were used to test these research questions. The results indicate that both internal and external integration positively influence product innovation and quality and ultimately, profitability. With respect to contingency effects, the results indicate that equivocality moderates the relationships between integration and performance.     

Lean Product Development: Nothing New Under the Sun?

The concept of lean product development has attracted the attention of many scholars since its inception in the 1990s derived from practices at Toyota Motor Company. Key to this approach to new product development (NPD) are a few methods derived from lean production as well as longer established practices such as concurrent engineering. This makes one wonder whether lean product development is a new practice, a new method or an encapsulation of already existing methods at the time; this quest for the roots and tenets of lean product development, also in comparison with other methods for NPD, is the focus of this paper. This journey takes this propositional paper not only to the roots of lean product development and the context of its era of conception, but also to what this concept adds to other extant methods for NPD. In particular, this comparison draws out that other methods are trying to achieve the same objectives: the creation of products and services with value to the customer, the reduction of time‐to‐market and the efficient use of resources. This inference implies that managers of new product (and service) development can choose from a wider pallet of methods and approaches to enhance the performance of R&D and to connect better to manufacturing (including supply chains). Inevitably, this has implications for research on (lean) product and service development; hence, this paper sets out a research agenda based on the deliberations and gaps that have been uncovered in the discourse.     

Engineering changes for made-to-order products: How an MRP II system should handle them

Engineering or design changes are an integral part of any design and manufacturing chain of activities. In a made-to-order environment, standard design changes are outnumbered by those emerging during the design and manufacturing stages of individual contracts. This paper discusses the peculiarities of engineering changes in such an environment and proposes an integrated approach to monitoring, controlling and reporting of related activities, using a combination of MRP II modules, enhanced with manual forms, aimed at minimizing the painful impact of numerous design updates throughout the in-house product life cycle.     

A modelling approach for production costing and continuous improvement of manufacturing processes

It is shown how production management constraints can be taken into account as early as the design stage of the product. It is then shown that the indication of physical and economic performances is a means to obtain integration and to continually improve the manufacturing processes. To perform continuous and efficient evaluation of physical and economic performances, the concept of activity is introduced, now acknowledged as a basic concept of cost management systems. A modelling approach is then proposed to allow each member of the design team, in a concurrent engineering context, to perform activity based modelling and estimations with simulation. After describing the set of possible situations in which this approach can be used, an application case is presented concerning a French firm, and the advantages and disadvantages of the approach are discussed.     

网络能力、网络位置与创业绩效

创业活动的网络化组织已经成为国家或地区的一种新型创新模式,同时也受到越来越多的理论界的关注,网络能力作为企业通过构建外部关系获取各类资源的能力或技巧会对企业绩效产生影响,但其作用的过程机制并未得到进一步的解释。本文的实证研究结果显示企业通过自身的网络能力占据独特的网络位置,这种特定的位置为企业带来优势创新资源,从而提升企业的创业绩效,代表网络位置的中心度与核心度在网络能力与创业绩效之间发挥着不同的中介调节作用。     

Guidelines for contingency approach to planning

In an earlier article the author discussed the contingency approach to planning as a flexible managerial tool making it possible to find a good fit between the planning process and the organization. In the present article the contingency approach is applied to the product life cycle to show how the different steps in the planning process can be varied as the situation changes. The contingency approach to planning can be used in a similar fashion for a product line, a product division, or the entire organization.     

Lifetime Buy Decisions with Multiple Obsolete Parts

Life‐cycle mismatch occurs when the life cycles of parts end before the life cycles of the products in which those parts are used. Lifetime buys are one tactic for mitigating the effect of part obsolescence, where a quantity of parts is purchased for the remaining life of a product. We extend prior work that determines optimal lifetime buy quantities for one product with one obsolete part by providing an analytic solution and two simple heuristic policies for the optimal lifetime buy quantities when many parts become obsolete over a product's life cycle. We determine which of our two heuristics is most accurate for different product life cycles, which yields a metaheuristic with increased accuracy. That analysis also reveals critical perspectives in making lifetime buy decisions with nonstationary life‐cycle demand patterns.     

Product Orientation of Environmental Work

Product orientation of the environmental work of companies works for a reduction in the environmental impact of products in their total life cycle. In practise, to integrate the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) principle into the environmental work.A traditional environmental management system focuses on production. Product orientated environmental work involves all functions at the company. Tools and methods for the implementation of product orientation and management have been developed in a project financed by the Danish EPA.The results show that the approach towards product orientation should include: a LCA view, dialogue and co-operation, policies and methods, and integration in the environmental management system.For C.C. Jensen A/S (CCJ), the product orientation was initiated by establishment of a LCA view. The results have been integrated into CCJ's registration system, used for calculation of prices and for green accounts. The product orientation at CCJ has also resulted in an extended dialogue with their customers.     

An investigation of company product decision making

This article is concerned with an investigation of the approaches taken by companies in making product decisions. The first part is concerned with a review of the range of product decisions as presented within the literature. This range is established within the context of corporate planning, with a major split between long term strategic planning product decisions, and short term operational planning product decisions. The second part of the article is concerned with the results of a survey that was designed to investigate the criteria that companies use within their product decision making. These criteria included those applicable to strategic planning, but also incorporated a range of criteria applicable to short term operational planning, as proposed in a recent article by Greenley [8]. The overall conclusion to the survey results was that a common and universal approach to product decision making cannot be identified within this sample of companies. A low level of agreement as to the relative degree of importance of the criteria was evident, and, little attention to differentiating product decisions with time was also evident. The results also challenge the importance given by the literature to the concepts of product life cycle, portfolio analysis and synergy. Finally, the author suggests two implications as a consequence of these results.     

Product Life‐Cycle Management of Packaged Software

A software product becomes less valuable for its consumers over time due to technological and economic obsolescence. As a result, firms have an opportunity to introduce and sell upgrades that provide higher utility to consumers compared to an older and out‐of‐date software product. In a market that is growing and consists of homogeneous customers, we prove that the optimal upgrade intervals are monotonically increasing throughout the product's life cycle solely because of demand and cost considerations. This finding is in conformity with empirical evidence, thus validating our theoretical model. We then present comparative statics results to show that increase in the rate of obsolescence or network externalities may sometimes increase upgrade intervals for early upgrades and decrease these for later upgrades in the product's life cycle, but increase in market growth rate always decreases these intervals. Further, when successive software upgrades are forward compatible, upgrade intervals are longer than when they are not. Finally, we present three separate extensions of our model to showcase the robustness of our results. Since upgrade development costs depend on upgrade intervals, these insights help managers understand how costing for upgrades changes over the product's life cycle.     

Industry Clockspeed and the Pace of New Product Development

Recent empirical literature describes an industry's clockspeed as a measure of the evolutionary life cycle, which captures the dynamic nature of the industry. Among other factors, the rate of new product development is found to be associated with an industry's clockspeed. Yet the notion of an industry clockspeed and the essential factors driving suitable decision making in this area have remained relatively unexplored. We develop a simple definition and a corresponding analytic model which explains the interdependent relationship between a firm's own new product development activities and an industry clockspeed. Results from the single firm model show the conditions under which particular firms have an incentive to accelerate their new product development activities. Moreover, we link the single firm's NPD clockspeed decisions to the industry level by creating appropriate metrics which characterize different types of industries. Examples from high‐tech industries such as the personal computer and aerospace industries are included to illustrate our findings. Our intention is not only to offer analytical insights into factors driving the clockspeed for these industries, but also to establish a fundamental structured decision making approach, thereby stimulating future research on this important topic.     

行业竞争力导向的在线大规模定制产品族规模优化方法

客户导向的产品族规模优化方法在与竞争对手产品族相比时并不一定能使在线定制服务提供商获得竞争优势,还需要考虑竞争对手产品族对其产品族规模的影响。产品族规模优化应该在满足工程技术约束和制造规模经济性的基础上,引入产品功能配置元和结构配置元,结合客户需求强度和偏好分析,构建了行业竞争力导向的在线大规模定制产品族规模优化方法,最后结合案例证明该方法的有效性。     

The Selection of Computer-Aided Software Engineering Tools: A Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach

The selection of the appropriate computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools to suit the needs of an organization requires the systematic application of the multi-criteria decision methodology (MCDM). In order to make a case for the use of MCDM, the application of the ELECTRE I method to the selection of CASE tools from a possible set of six alternatives is demonstrated. The demonstration helps in gaining a grasp of the MCDM approach and the ELECTRE I method. There is potential for the application of the MCDM approach in other software engineering decisions, especially in the feasibility analysis of the systems life cycle.     

Concurrent product development for fast-track corporations

Fast-Track corporations take strategic initiatives in responding quickly even to weak signals from their external environments. Implementation of this strategic intent demands an effective mobilization of the organization's internal resources and configuration. This paper begins by discussing the evolving micro-economic relationship between producers and consumers of goods and services in globalized economy, and explores the origins of organizations' product development programmes. Then classical and current approaches to product development are reviewed with respect to understanding the anatomy of a concurrent approach. Three different modes of integration, with stress on hardware, humanware and software, are discussed. A portfolio of alternative routes to achieving concurrence is proposed.     

CLOCKSPEED‐BASED STRATEGIES FOR SUPPLY CHAIN DESIGN1

This paper discusses a framework for strategic supply chain design that rests on an assortment of conceptual approaches. These approaches include benchmarking fast‐evolving industries to posit principles of supply chain dynamics and integrating supply chain design into the concurrent processes of product and manufacturing system design. These approaches yield insights into sourcing strategy as well as implementation of concurrent engineering.     

Product Design for Life‐Cycle Mismatch

Life‐cycle mismatch occurs when the life cycle of a product does not coincide with the life cycles of the parts used in that product. This is particularly a problem with products that contain electronic components that sometimes have life spans of only two years. The cost of mitigating component obsolescence, which may require redesigning the product, is often considerable. Thus, prudent product design necessitates the selection of electronic components and product architecture, considering the cost of mitigating an obsolete design and other costs related to the design and manufacture of a product. Accordingly, we develop and analyze a model that shows how a product design can be effectively tailored to a particular product's life cycle.