Concurrent Engineering: A Successful Example for Engineering Design Research

This paper reviews concurrent engineering from the viewpoint of engineering design research., Concurrent engineering aims at eliminating unnecessary changes and redesigns from a product development process, and at achieving better product quality. To do so, it is critical to facilitate teamwork and collaboration by improving communication among various participants in the development process and by allowing them to share information and knowledge. In contrast, the engineering design research community has worked on general and abstract theories that are too difficult to apply. To improve this situation, three recommendations for the design community are made. One is to focus on general but concrete problems. Second, research should be directed toward clear goals such as arriving at innovative designs more efficiently. Third, engineering design research should tackle design knowledge issues including ontology, models and model operations.