Concurrent engineering in practice: a brief review

Concurrent engineering has enabled many organisations to improve their product development, production, product support and customer relationships. The evidence suggests that when a concurrent engineering approach is appropriately designed and implemented, organisational performance improves significantly, resulting in lower cost, improved product quality, reduction in cycle time and time-to-market, and improved utilisation and coordination of human resources. Most of the applications of concurrent engineering have been in large organisations with fewer examples of successful applications in smaller firms. In this paper, a brief review of concurrent engineering practices is provided. The intent is not to be comprehensive but to demonstrate that applications of concurrent engineering span a variety of economic sectors.