FEASIBILITY OF APPLICATION CONCURRENT ENGINEERING IN NIGERIA AS A DEVELOPING CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

BY

UKOKOBILI, O.JACOB

ENG0402079

A PROJECT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING

(B. ENG.) DEGREE

IN

THE DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

UNIVERSITY OF BENIN

NIGERIA

FEBUARUY, 2011.

CERTIFICATION

This work was carried out by UKOKOBILI, O.J in the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Benin, Benin City and is hereby certified.

SUPERVISOR:

Name: A.N ANIEKWUSignature and Date: __________________________

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT

Name: ENGR. DR. C. IZINYONSignature and Date: ____________________________

DEDICATION

This study is dedicated to Almighty God for the gift of life and His abundant grace all this years, my parents Mr. and Mrs. A. UKOKOBILI for their parental love, care, moral teachings and financial support, my siblings UKOKOBILI REBECCA (Miss), UKOKOBILI DANIEL, UKOKOBILI PETER, UKOKOBILI OSEMUDIAMEN and the family of Hon. and Mrs B.O ASIKHIA for their moral support.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I am sincerely grateful to God Almighty for giving me the Grace to run and complete this project successfully.

My gratitude goes to my supervisor A.N ANIEKWU for his fatherly care and support throughout the period he supervised me, my H.O.D. ENGR. DR. C. IZINYON, the entire academic staff and other members of staff of the Department, other members of the University community.

Words are not enough to express my gratitude to my beloved friend PEACE AMAKA AGHOLOR (Miss) for her support and encouragement especially when my Laptop was stolen almost at the end of my project, also to Choristers of Gabriels Catholic Church Choir, Urora for prayers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Content

Page

DEDICATION

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ii

ABTRACT

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

iv

LIST OF TABLES

v

LIST OF FIGURES

vi

LIST OF SYBMOLS

vii

CHAPTER ONE:

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Problem Definition

1.3 Aims and Objective

1.4 Scope of Study

CHAPTER TWO:

2.1Literature Review ...................................................................... 4

2.2The Historical Foundation of Concurrent Engineering.............. 5

2.1.1The Evolution of the internal environment................... 11

2.1.2The changes in external environment...........................12

2.1.3The reinvention of concurrent engineering...................20

2.2 Building blocks for concurrent engineering............................24

2.2.1Function of good project development....................... 24

2.2.2Important factors in concurrent practices.....................25

2.2.3Helpful rule base method.............................................26

2.3Cross functional teamwork in organisation.............................30

2.3.1Teamwork...................................................................30

2.3.2What is a team............................................................33

2.3.3Multifunction product development team.................35

2.3.4Ten principle of successful team...............................37

2.3.5Organisational design and planning..........................38

2.4Implementation.....................................................................42

2.4.1Project team structure..............................................44

2.5.1Team meeting..........................................................45

2.5Benefits of concurrent engineering....................................48

CHAPTER THREE:

3.0Methodology.....................................................................50

3.1Methodology.....................................................................51

CHAPTER FOUR:

4.0Result...............................................................................53

4.1Respondent profile......................................................... 53

4.2Summary of results........................................................99

4.3Discussion....................................................................101

CHAPTER FIVE:

5.0Conclusion...................................................................103

5.1Recommendation.........................................................103

REFERENCES................................................................................... 105

APPENDIX 1......................................................................................109

APPENDIX 2.....................................................................................117

REFERENCES

APPENDIX

ABSTRACT

The Nigeria construction industry is faced with increasing number of complex and sophisticated design of structure, that requires the urgent need for a more technical and technological method to improve the performance of project development in the construction industry.

This study therefore assesses the feasibility of Concurrent Engineering to a developing construction industry to make construction process less fragmented, to improve project quality, to effectively keep construction project within deadline. Thus, avoiding problems that might jeopardize the success of the whole construction process.

KEYWORDS: Concurrent Engineering (CE) in the Nigeria construction industry.

CHAPTER ONE1.1 INTRODUCTION

The Nigeria construction industry over the years has been faced with continuously increasing demand and sophistication of clients, which calls for the need for changes within the construction industry in its current practices and project development which include design, procurement, construction, project delivery etc.

Many of the services and parts of the structure of the modern facilities are now so technically specialized that they have to be designed by many specialists. Hence, a feature of the construction industry is the division of the production responsibilities amongst many participants who belong to different organisation with different policies, objectives and practices (Aniekwu, 2002).

Concurrent Engineering (CE), sometimes called parallel or simultaneous engineering is a work methodology based on the parallelisation of tasks (i.e performing tasks concurrently), and is a systematic approach to the integrated, concurrent design of products and their related processes, including manufacture and supports (Winner at el. 1998).

The context of the construction industry, Evbuomwan and Anumba (1998) defined CE as an attempt to optimize the design of the project and its construction process to achieve reduced lead times, and improved project quality and cost by integration of design fabrication, construction and ecration activities and maximising concurrency and collaboration in working practices.

The concurrent engineering (CE) method is still a relatively new design management system, but has had the opportunity of mature in recent years to become a well-defined cycles.

Therefore, this paper focuses on the feasibility of the application of concurrent engineering to a developing construction industry.

1.2 PROBLEM DEFINITION

The Nigeria construction industry has not been performing as well as it could for a number of years now. This industry comprises a group of heterogeneous and fragmented firms and within firms. There is often a great diversity of activities. No other has similar characteristics.

The separation of design from production. Traditionally, design is carried out by the design team (architects, structural engineer, and services engineers) while the production is carried out by separate team, the building team comprising the builders/construction manager and the quantity surveyors who carries out the cost management making the entire construction process a complex industrial structure.

Sadly, this has resulted in many unethical practices leading to shoddy jobs, structural failures, and project abandonment among others.

The Nigeria construction industry shares similar characteristics with construction industry all over the world. Hence, this study will be relevant to professional in other countries and foreign professionals who will be doing business in Nigeria in the future.

1.3 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study is to access the feasibility of the application of CE to a developing construction industry.

The main objective of this study includes:1. To assess the level of awareness of CE,

2. Factors and Constrains that will hinder implementation,

3. Benefits of applying of CE in Nigeria as a developing construction industry, and

4. The readiness in adopting CE1.4 SCOPE OF WORK

This work study is limited to the application of CE within Nigeria as a developing construction industry. CHAPTER TWO2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW

Concurrent engineering which is sometimes called simultaneous engineering or Integrated Product Development (IPD) is defined as a systematic approach to the integrated, concurrent design of products and their related processes, including manufacture and support. This approach is intended to cause the developers, from the outset, to consider all elements of the product life cycle from conception through disposal, including quality, cost, schedule, and user requirement.

Concurrent engineering is not a quick fix for a companys problems and its not just a way to improve engineering performance. Its a business strategy that addresses important company resources. The major objectives this business strategy aim to achieve is improved project development performance. CE is a long-term strategy, and it should be considered only by organisation willing to make up front investment and the wait several years for long-term benefit. It involves major organisation and cultural changes.

The problem with project with project development performance that CE aims to overcome, those of the traditional serial project development process in which people from different department work one after the other successive phase of development. In traditional serial project development, the project is first completely defined by the design team, after which the construction process is defined by the construction team, etc. Usually this is slow, costly and low-quality approach, leading to a lot of changes, projects delays and construction errors.

Concurrent engineering bring together multidisciplinary teams in which project developers from different functions work together and in parallel from the start of a project with the intention of getting things right as quickly as possible, and as early as possible. A cross-functional team might contain representatives of different functions such as the Consultants, Architects, Structural engineer, the building team, quantity surveyor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, service engineer etc. Sometimes client is also included.

In the CE approach to development, input is obtained from as many functional areas as possible before the specifications are finalized.

This results in the project development team clearly understanding what the project requires in terms of mission performance, environmental conditions during construction budget and scheduling2.1 THE HISTORICAL FOUNDATION OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING

The concepts fundamental to concurrent engineering can be traced back to every small manufacturer and designer in history. When design, marketing, production and the target customers were the same person or very small specialized team, the idea of their cooperation and designs reflecting knowledge of all the downstream requirements is natural. Concurrent engineering has not been the sole domain of theoretical academics but is well demonstrated in industry.

CE may not always have been identified with a name since it was applied and unrecognized or identified. A concept such as CE can only be defined in comparison to something, which it is not. If there is no known alternative it is hardly possible to label what is common practice, the names did not develop until there were plenty of examples of very different practice. The modern need for concurrent engineering is directly related to the increase of size and complexity of industry. The factors which lead to the rebirth of CE over the past 20 years are not only increased competition, accelerated development requirements, increased quality requirements, but also the progress and growth of the post war period. This period of expansion is marked with increasing over-management and compartmentalization in industry which caused sequential engineering to develop. The benefits resulting from the application of CE are the result of large complex entities function as many small, yet integrated groups. The potential of this is great; by using the skills of many people it creates a potential reservoir of skill, knowledge and experience far greater than any individual could ever posses. The results of this approach are seen well before the early 1980s when CE was rediscovered.

The Ford Motor Company historically utilized many of the ideas found in modern CE, but lost them after the Second World War and then, over the last two decades, expended a great deal of energy to reintroduce the same ideas in a modernization and evolved form. The philosophy of CE is not entirely novel. Pioneers of the automobile industry, like Henry Ford and Ransom Olds, practiced to a certain extent the philosophy of what we now call concurrent engineering. During Ford s early years, (1908-1927) it was by no means small single man operation, yet they focused on designing a car easily and cheaply mass- produced, this car, the Model T would be built for 19 years and revolutionize industry and culture around the world. Designing a car to be easily manufactured and assembled sounds much like DFA and DFM of modern theory. Not only did Ford use small-integrated teams, but also as a mechanic, machinist and businessman, he possessed intimate knowledge of the complete process. As businesses grew in size and complexity, it became much more difficult for a single person to posses all the skills needed to understand the entire process. The modern education system creates an intrinsic separation between the people who will build the machines and those who design. In companies such as Ford where they started with just a handful of people, each performing multiple tasks, this sort of separation was not such an issue. Admittedly, given the requirements of modern technology, this sort of educationally separation is largely inescapable, although through sufficiently broad education and experience it may be minimized. Following this trend, that compartmentalization is the result of greater complexity, the subsequent evolution of SE along with the increase in complexity is natural. As company expands, both in terms of size and interconnection with other entities, the designer is prevented from taking an integrated approach unless they enact some deliberate mechanism such as CE to preserve interaction among all the parties involved.

Some of the best early demonstrations of Concurrent Engineering come out of American industry during the Second World War. The United States developed not only an immense production capacity of war material, but also designed and built the necessary equipment in highly compressed timeframes with high quality results. At this point Ford still possessed the qualities that had enabled it to development its early successes. The peacetime engineering philosophy, a legacy of Henry Ford, of using small, integrated, multidisciplinary teams similar to modern concurrent engineering practices was extended to Ford s military production. Ford used these techniques to develop and build trucks, tank engines, jeeps, B-24 bombers and other important products for the war. A specific and rather impressive example is the design of the P-51 fighter. The story of this airplanes design demonstrates what could be done with the combination of CE, time pressure and the willingness to utilize progressive technology. The design process used on the P-51 project was not called by any special title; it was simply doing what needed to be done, presumably the way the best of industry functioned at the mid century mark. The P-51 was developed extremely quickly, although infinitely far from the complexity of modern aircraft, designing and building a fighter for scratch to a flying prototype in a little more than three months is truly an impressive feat. This remarkable aircraft was designed and built in 102 days . . . Compared to a contemporary Spitfire with the same engine, the Mustang climbed faster, had 50mph greater top speed and had a much longer range, despite being 1600 pounds heavier. These examples demonstrate that although very useful and perhaps necessary in the modern environment, it was possible to rapidly develop complex designs without digital computers, CAD or all of the modern tools now associated with CE. It cannot accurately be said that intelligent design practices (such as CE) ever disappeared in a chronological sense, it is more a matter of increasing limitations and constrains developing to overshadow what fundamentally sound practice existed. The following is an example of a company that managed to use fundamentally practices without the benefit of a formally recognized methodology. Western Gear was a heavy machinery manufacture, based in Everett Washington. The following is an excerpt from the recollections of mechanical engineer who worked for Western Gear from the early 1970s until 1986. At Western Gear where we built everything that we designed, there was an emphasis on getting manufacturing involved as early as possible. We would hold reviews of initial designs when all we had to talk over a fairly sketchy layout on vellum. The real reason was to cut costs so that the manufacturing was only done once or twice. When the time schedule was really tight, planning would start planning manufacturing by looking over our shoulders at the drafting boards while the design was still fluid. We usually got some good ideas from the planners and machinists when the time was tight and we were all working together at once. When time wasn't so critical there wasn't so much motivation or the priorities were on other projects where it was more critical. If vellum was replaced with CAD system this quote could easily be coming from a contemporary account of applied CE. Yet this quote is in reference to a company which closed down before the widespread application of systematic concurrent engineering in the USA. This also brings up an important change in corporate practice, the fact that Western Gear built everything they designed is in stark contrast to the practice of most modern companies, such as Boeing, who essentially design the overall structure and assemble the parts built by suppliers.

This sort of structure requires more much effort to ensure proper communication than when parts and being built in the same faculty by employees of the same company who designed them and is going to do the final assembles. These issues are now starting to be added with new Internet based tools such as IP Team mentioned later in the paper, yet these sorts of tools are very new and still uncommon in industry. The Western Gear example shows that although all industry was not universally entrenched in a hopeless state of sequentially engineered disaster, the level of the problem depended on other factors such as the level of outsourcing. Western Gear was relatively small and specialized in low tech heavy machinery, these factors helped to create the type of environment where it was possible to do good design without a formal process. The major difference between what was done in this example and theory is the lack of a formal plan; what they were doing worked, but it is impossible to know if anyone knew why this was. Without the awareness of their practices, there is no motivation to preserve their function as other factors change. This lack of awareness may explain part of the evolution into sequential engineering. Managers and designers didnt realize that small integrated teams were an efficient and effective means of structuring design groups, so they adopted new, and we now can say, less productive strategies as they evolved. An important, or at least often neglected, point is that the ideas fundamental to concurrent engineering have long been recognized by at least some portion of academia. These ideas were not commonly identified within the entire community, but were still at least at times recognized to some extent. Within the engineering literature there are numerous pre-W.W.II examples directly referring to the ideas fundamental to concurrent engineering. The following is an example which dates for 1921, some sixty years prior to the modern invention of concurrent engineering. It is plain that the manufacturing designer must take into consideration every circumstance involved in the production of the commodity. To be successful, he must work in close cooperation with all who will be engaged in the development and operation of the manufacturing equipment. This will include tool designers and the superintendents and foremen of the various manufacturing and assembling departments.

It is clear that neither the ideas nor the practices that define CE are inventions of the past couple of decades. It is however unclear why much of American industry evolved in such a way that it would eventually require major reform and the reintroduction of the very ideas and practices which had years before come naturally.

The history of Concurrent engineering, consists of three periods, the first is the historical application of the ideas without recognition of a formal structure. This typically took place before the Second World War. During the second phase, which continued though the early 1980s, the ideas of CE were apparently lost, or were at least prevented from being used by changes in the design environment. The third period of CE s history, from the early 80 s through present, is characterized by the resurrection of ideas from the first period along with new tools and methodology, which were used to adapt to the contemporary design environment. It is fairly clear what happened during CEs history, the question of why those things happened is not so clear. In the next section of this paper it will examine this aspect of CE s history and attempt to developed a plausible explanation for the development of the environment which lead to the recent popularly of Concurrent Engineering.

2.1.1 THE EVOLUTION OF THE INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

After the remarkable achievements of the period up through the Second World War, American design entered into a period characterized by poor design methodology and then suddenly, around 1980 began to adopt the practices and ideas which are today called Concurrent Engineering. The literature suggests numerous explanations for this phenomenon, despite the multitude of theories, no single one is capable of providing a particularly satisfying explanation. Thus in order to understand the background as well as is possible, the spectrum of theories will be considered and appraised. The most common explanation for the transition to CE that increasing complication of technology and heightened competition forced design companies to make radical changes in design and management philosophy to remain competitive. Yet this approach is difficult to support, both with the literature and through solid reasoning. More importantly the competition theory does not9 explain how industry came to be in such a state that they could no longer be viable after years of successful or at least sufficient performance. There are two general approaches to understand the origin of the problem. The first is that the environment changed around industry that design was working fine until something external, such as foreign competition came along and made the old system no longer viable. The second is the idea that changes within in structure and organization of the design environment caused it to become ineffective and unacceptable to both industry and the end customer. The most probably explanation is a combination of both internal and external factors combining at the right time to force a change.

2.1.2 CHANGES IN THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

There are a many potential influencing factors on the adopted of CE. These include increased cooperation required by new manufacturing technologies, the change in the availability/cost of communication and information technologies, internal reluctance to restructuring out of the fear of losing power, the level and type of training received by engineers and finally a widespread shift towards shortened lead-times. The first explanation for the change in the design environment is that the manufacturing processes developed recently require greater cooperation than those of the earlier period and thus have increased the need for systems such as CE. We observe the long-standing notion that new manufacturing technologies increase the need for design-manufacturing integration.

Although its effect is characteristic of an overall increase in complexity, manufacturing process alone is not responsible for this paradigm shift in design. While there certainly have been new, complicated technologies developed over the last decades, all technologies were new at one time and the design environment that has undergone considerable change over time. There is little new about change in technology, aside from the its rate. Although a general change in the degree of cooperation required by new manufacturing technologies is not a major factor in the creation of a need for a new design methodology, a change in the overall complexity is. In the 1980s companies started to feel the influence of large multinational organizations on markets, increased product complexities and new developments in innovative technologies. This directly affected the organizations ability to develop and introduce new products to the market.

This increase in complexity and technologies made it more difficult to develop products and hence more difficult to compete. The differences between companies may also have been increased; the new complex technologies made it harder to other companies to catch up if a competitor had the advantage of years of development time. Another factor that has in fact undergone a great deal of change is the price and availability of the communication and information technologies. The reinvention of CE and the development of computer technology took place over a very similar timeframe. Advancements in CAD, CAM, and other computer tools have greatly enhanced and simplified information storage and sharing, making the implementation of CE much less expensive.

Although certainly important, the availability and cost of Information Technology (IT) can only be part of the reason for CE s rebirth, as it shown elsewhere in this paper there are plenty of examples of CE type practices before the invention of the transistor. One point this argument does have in its favour is that as the companies grew and decentralized, the computer tools greatly enhance communication. Yet such programs as NexPrise's IPTeam are just now being developed, 20+ years after the initial renewed interest in CE began. In the early 1980s CE developed along with CAD, but before the Internet and other tools which help it to be practical for modern use. There is also an issue of the culture and structure that CE had to develop under, the separation pre-existent within management structure made it difficult to implement CE. It is intriguing to theorize that it took so long for CE to become popular because the existing compartmentalized system s character suppressed11 any sort of structural change. One of the characteristics of the post-war, pre-CE workplace is the excessive management. By introducing small multi-disciplinary teams with decision-making authority, it can erode the lines of authority and threaten the power within a company. Since those in power usually are the ones to make decisions, it is not surprising that this might inhibit the growth of CE. Training and education may also be contributing factors. Smith suggests that engineers lacked the proper education and training in what makes good design methodology. This lack of knowledge is blamed for CE not becoming widespread earlier. This is an interesting suggestion, although it was not so much a matter of training in process, but rather a lack of training in awareness of process. As discussed previously it was unschooled engineers such as Henry Ford who first applied the ideas on a reasonable scale. Training is certainly part of the solution, yet it requires a greater wariness of process and methodology for training in any sort of design methodology to take place. A final suggestion is that a widespread trend towards shortened lead-time created a situation that had the potential to benefit greatly from the application of CE and thus is encouraged its adoption. There have been changes in the strategic environment that have led to an increased need for and acceptance of concurrent engineering ideas in recent years An increase in the quality expected from the customer is often used to explain the need for CE implementation. Yet the idea that there was a great deal more competition seems unlikely. One justification given for the need for increased cooperation in the Product development process is an increased level of competition. This justification is incongruent with historical facts. There have been claims that the level of competition has increased recently at times that we no longer consider recent. Also, business historians have observed that the level and degree of competition was as severe, if not more severe, in previous eras than it is today. Increased competition from a compressed design cycle cannot be completely dismissed, but competition is hardly a new phenomenon. There has always been competition in industry, consider the number of independent companies in such areas as the automotive industry has greatly reduced over the past century. So that at least in terms of numbers, there are few companies vying for market share in an industry which has been one of the strongest users of CE. It is probably more a matter of the potential for a great advantage if one company uses CE while the others are not. From these ideas Smith focuses on education as being the major factor which delayed CEs reintroduction. I suggest that the concurrent engineering ideas have existed for a long time, but were not put into practice both because older methods seemed easier and because the educational system did not advocate sufficiently a change to pre existing practices. Educators and researchers have the duty to ensure that this does not happen again. Yet this statement does not adequately address the multifaceted nature of the issue. Although education does play a role, there are other important issues. The development of communication tools made CE easier and more applicable for large companies. Although the tools alone do not ensure intelligent design, they are important for taking CE from theory into application. Also the problem of entrenched managements reluctance to change is not inconsequential. Finally there is very little change that takes place that is not in some way a matter of economics. Although SE may have seemed easy in comparison to the adoption of new methods, there must have been some breakpoint in the early 1980s at which it became worthwhile, and possible because of the availability of technology and ideas, to transition to CE. The reason for the transition is only part of the issue; it is also necessary look at the creation of the problem before fully understanding its solution.

The pressures on designers and corporations were not just from needing to compete, but something more fundamental. The move towards increasing complexity, such that a single engineer or manager can no longer be an expert on an entire system and the use of both geographically separated faculties and independent suppliers explain much of the change in the design environment. Competition is not new, the trends in industry over the last half century on the other hand are. The level of competition in all markets, including engineering products, is globally increasing. Reasons for this are complex, but the main contributors are use of new technology, larger number of organizations in the same markets and wider appreciation and use of continuous process improvements. There have also been changes in the external demands and conditions over the recent past. These are the product life-cycles of products shortening, the diversity, variety and complexity of products increasing and the customers becoming increasingly more sophisticated and demanding customized products more closely targeted to their needs. This has led to the pressures of continuous product improvements, leading to ever increasing functionality and features.

This author, Syan credits a number of different issues: increasing complexity, life cycle shortening, increasing customer expectations, and greater specialization requirements. This view is at the least more specific, if not more realistic than Smith is, and from this vantage-point, sound very reasonable. One commonly cited examples of increased pressure on American business is Japanese industry s higher quality and lower prices forcing American industry to change in order to compete. In some industries the Japanese did play an influential role. In many cases the pace was set by the Japanese, who progressively made inroads in North American and Europe and in some cases dominated chosen markets. The list of these chosen markets became longer year by year. The pressure applied by the Japanese would not have been so important, except that American industry was not positioned to make changes and did not act soon enough. Western companies attempted to meet this pressure by applying computer tools without changing their basic structure. This method did not work; the computer tools alone were insufficient to meet the challenge. Western companies were slow to recognize the basis of Japanese success, but eventually responded with a whole string of actions including CAD/CAE/ CAM/CIM, robotics, automation, value analysis, quality programmes, and information technology and so on. They sought to offset a perceived weakness their workforces by building on their apparent strength technology, particularly computer-based technology.

In addition to foreign pressures, there were internal pressures that also acted at the same time to compound the pressures on industry to reform. This is all happening with the majority of the Western worlds common economic background of slow growth, excess capacity, increasing legislation compliance, demographic changes, market complexity and increasing globalization of industries. The combined forces of Japanese progressive design philosophy and economic advantages over those of most Western companies was an important factor in bringing the state of the design environment to a point where drastic measures were required. One twist on this technological acceleration theory is that it was not the case that everyone was equally handicapped. As the rate of technological development accelerated, it made it possible for some companies to create new successful products, which because of the technological advantage over the competition placed enormous pressures on those companies who fell behind.

The effect of forced design cycle reduced the possibility for input from marketing and manufacturing which resulted in increasingly poor reflection of the original engineering requirements. One effect of the changing design environment was the increasing competitive demands and compressed design cycles. To compete successfully, companies have to continuously keep reducing development times and sustain improvements in their products and their quality. The need for better quality and shorter product development lead times is now widely acknowledged and the realization that the concurrent engineering approach offers the best way of achieving these objectives has also became a necessary company strategy.

These pressures helped to trigger the change to new methods and attitudes about design. Concurrent engineerings history may be considered from the premise that it was introduced to combat internally sourced problems in the design environment. This problem is characterized by the phenomenon, now identified as Sequential Engineering (SE). It was not so much a theory, as a symptom of the ills affecting industry. The alternative to concurrent engineering had strong organizational separation between design, manufacturing and marketing, and/or to separate the functional design of the product from production design and manufacturing process design. There were, and continue to be many problems with SE, one of the particularly weak areas is an inadequate understand of product specifications, including not only those of the purchase customers, but also Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA). DFM and DFA are ironically areas that were previously strong in American industry. Henry Ford in the early 1900 s and Ford Motor Co through the 1940 have used DFM/DFA, yet they were lost in the post-war expansion. (This is explored in depth earlier in the paper) Concurrent Engineering offers simple, yet powerful instruments such as QFD to combat some of SEs failures. QFD is a structured approach to defining customer needs or requirements and translating them into specific plans to produce products to meet those requirements which requires no computer technology or advanced communications ability to implement only the knowledge of their existence. Despite its appealing nature QFD was not first introduced in the USA until 1984. QFD also combats SEs failure to perform accurate cost estimates, this is reflected in fire fighting late stage design changes. These changes resulted from poor specification understand and a lack of DFM. Yet these simple, low-tech tools were not adopted initially Western companies, instead they attempted to meet the challenge of their foreign competitors by using new computer technology within their existing systems. These attempts can at best be called a Band-Aid solution that was largely unsuccessful despite the expense and attractive nature of computer technology. Without the proper structure, computer tools were used simply as a direct replacement for older technology for such tasks as drafting and did very little to alleviate the problems of SE. This expensive technology was largely ineffective, because the new tools were used with existing structures, practices and attitudes. Within the SE environment, application of the new computer technology did not help the situation. Products continued to arrive in the market place at unsatisfactory quality levels, and often too late to achieve sales and profit objectives. Real progress would require both the computer tools and the intentional adoption of progressive design methodologies. All of the factors discussed played some role in bringing about CEs modern development and popularly. It is not possible to choose a single factor which was responsible, other than to say that a lack of historical perspective, both in the modern and historical engineering communities caused them to fail to understand what practices worked or if their new and improved practices were actual an improvement. The design environment, both internal and external, underwent a great deal of change in the past century and a half since the industrial revolution began, and at least during the portion of the twentieth century, engineering design philosophy did not always adapt along with the environment.

2.1.3 THE REINVENTION OF CE

The reinvention , reintroduction and adaptation of concurrent engineering which has taken place over the past 20 years is one of the most ironic, almost comical, aspects of CE s history. It is akin to European reintroduction of the Greek classics from the Islamic Moors. The very ideas that had originally defined Western throughout were lost for 500 years before being reintroduced from a foreign culture. Although CE was lost for closer to 50 years, it might still be appropriate to call the SE era the Dark Ages of design methodology. Even once sequential engineering was recognized as needing a replacement, the process of change was not an easy one. It could be argued that many factors remain that17 inhibit the complete adaptation of CE s principles. Ideas that were perceived as coming from Japan are important in the re-creation process. At the beginning of the 1980 s American corporations such as Ford set up programs to learn design from a group perceived as being more skilled then could be found domestically: the Japanese. It has been practiced by successful manufacturing managers, but no one has paid much attention to applying it in a systematic way. Japanese industry has practiced CE, without using its name, for some time. This is clearly illustrated by the studies done in the automotive industry, comparing the time to market of Japanese and European manufactures.

Although Japanese industry may certainly claim credit for further developing the ideas and the creation of some tools for CE, it was ironically an American, Dr. W. Edwards Deming who thirty years before had introduced CE to Japan after Second World War. In 1981 the American Supplier Institute (ASI) and Ford (ASI was previously called the Ford Supplier Institute) brought Deming back to the United States to help them develop CE in the USA. Japans early adoption of CE demonstrates what inhibiting force an existing entrenched system and perceived success can have on the implementation of new ideas. Japan was forced to rebuild from nothing after the war, while USA industry grew on top of an already highly developed foundation without a firm understanding of the principles, which are necessary for preservation of communication and intelligent design. The issue of defence spending and contracts may also explain some of the differences. While the US government funded immensely expensive space and defence projects of the Cold War, Japan was forbidden from building its military and therefore put its efforts into the civilian sector of the economy. After the Second World War, the USA sent advisors such as Deming to assist the Japanese in rebuilding their industry.

Deming was intelligent enough to recognize, well before it was widespread knowledge, what worked in design and was therefore able to encourage the use of those principles in Japan and eventually back home in the USA.18 Another important foreign influence to the implementation of CE, is CATIA, a powerful CAD and integrated design, modelling and manufacturing system. Avions Marcel Dassault, a French aeronautical company started working with CADAM systems in 1975, when they acquired one from Lockheed. This system proved inadequate so they began developed an own proprietary software in 1977. IN 1985, CATIA V.2 was released with fully integrated drafting, solid and robotics functions. It took a couple of more years before IBM joined and CATIA was used in the USA.

In '87-'88 Boeing was beginning to focus on CATIA which had the capability of being used by both engineering and manufacturing. At first it was being used mostly as a drafting machine but gradually as people learned how to use it was used for layouts (initial engineering) and we started to talk about eliminating the paper drawings and only using data sets, both for design and planning.

CATIA is important because it was more than a computer system used to generate drawings, but also provided tools which could be used to promote the sharing of information and connecting manufacturing and design within the same computer system. This paper has stressed that the ideas and concepts that define concurrent engineering were well established in both industry and academia prior to the 1950, yet there are some important differences that characterize the modern incarnation. It could be argued that what is new about concurrent engineering practice is not the adoption of any individual element of this package, but rather the adoption of all of this approach, and its synthesis into a novel method for product development.

Modern CE is not only using many of the different techniques, more importantly it is the acknowledgment of a definite systematic strategy to overcome the factors which create compartmentalization and poor cooperation and communication. As has been demonstrated historically, CE can be practiced with great success in certain special situations without the benefit of computers or even a formal methodology. Yet such situations are a rarity in the modern world of bigger companies, more complex products, shortened design cycles and dispersed development teams. This [informal/unorganized] type of CE practice exists in very small companies who have very skilled and experienced people in their organizations. So while for the sake of argument CE is not new, it did not develop until the early 80s because it did not make economic sense, the pressures were not high enough and the tools were not yet available earlier to enable large corporations to adopt CE. Future considerations one final historical note (further study). It strikes the author that there must be some connection between the industrial atmosphere of the Cold War period, and the nature of evolution away from concurrent engineering practices. Although there must be some mention of it in the literature it is well hidden and the author of this paper was not able to find anything about the effects of the Cold War on design methodology. It does not seem, or perhaps it is still classified, that there were the same great feats of engineering as during the Second World War. Yet the movement back to concurrent engineering came from the military sector which

2.2 BUILDING BLOCKS FOR CONCURRENT ENGINEERINGA feasible approach to part count reduction is to design multi-use or "building block" parts that can be used interchangeably in a variety of different products, product models, or applications. For example, with the right standardization scheme, the same mounting plate can be used to mount a variety of different components. Multi-use parts reduce manufacturing information content by reducing the number of part variations that need to be manufactured. They produce economies of scale because of increased production volume of fewer parts and economies of scope because the same part is being used in a variety of applications and products. 2.2.1 FACTORS OF GOOD PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

The first step in achieving a simple design is to develop a systematized product structure which standardizes the relationship between product function, form and fabrication.What are product development tasks?

2.2.2 IMPORTANT FACTORS IN CONCURRENT ENGINEERING PRACTICE1. Organizational Factor

a. Cross-functional Teams - Project team members gain a better understanding of project priorities and process discipline, making risks and compromises visible for better control. The design team is composed of experts from engineering, production, marketing and any other functional area which has a vested interest in the development project. The team is formed to work on a specific project, and stays together throughout the development of the product. This approach seems more recent, as it has been discussed throughout the forties, fifties, and sixties as a viable mode of accomplishing complex development work.

b. Liaison Personnel - Liaison personnel are not members of any functional piece of an organization, but rather people who are capable and prepared to address issues which span functional organizational boundaries. Liaison Personnel have as their full-time job the coordination of the disparate functions. Under this approach, they become the primary modes of accomplishing information transfer between functional areas.

c. Job Rotation - Job Rotation means to rotate personnel between functional categories. These personnel are assigned temporarily or permanently outside of their accustomed functional specialty, which is a manufacturing engineer will work with design engineers or vice versa. Thus it is possible to integrate the various knowledge bases without making significant structural changes to the organization. Job rotation does seem to have useful integration benefits.

2.2.3 SOME HELPFUL RULE BASED METHODS:a. Product Design Methods Design for Manufacturing (DFM) - DFM seeks to minimize manufacturing information content of a product design to the fullest extent possible within constraints imposed by functionality and performance.

1. Minimize the total number of parts

2. Simplify the design to ensure that the remaining parts are easy to fabricate, assemble, handle and service

3. Standardize where possible to facilitate desirable produceability characteristics such as interchangeability, interoperability, simplified interfaces, effective consolidation of parts and function, availability of components and so forth.

Design for Quality - can be implemented in the system design step by intentionally designing the product and process to be tolerant of variation

Design for Cost - It is essential that industrial organizations have viable and responsive cost analysis and control systems. Effective analysis of product or project costs and the ability to implement cost control management includes management of the product or project cost, and this requires a knowledge and understanding of the cost elements and their sensitivity to various control parameters. Cost analysis forms the basis for cost control, and without accurate and timely cost data, effective cost control is impossible. The most accurate and timely cost data are useless unless coupled with an effective cost control mechanism.

Design for Assembly (DFA) - Seeks to minimize cost of assembly within constraints imposed by other design requirements. DFA has been the starting point for development of a corporate DFM philosophy and the culture change that accompanies it.

Design for Safety - The designer must develop the habit of constantly evaluating the design for safety, considering not only the design itself but the personnel involved in fabricating the product, using the procedure, and in maintaining and repairing the product or system as well as the end user or purchaser. Developing the manufacturing processes as well as the maintenance and operating procedures early during the design process will assist in revealing safety problems at a time when corrective action can be taken at minimum cost.

Design for Reliability - Reliability is defined as the probability that a system device or component will successfully perform for:

1. A given range of operating conditions

2. A specific environmental condition

3. A prescribed economic survival time

Design for X - Help to ensure that parts and products are correctly designed to be produced using a particular production process or method such as plastic injection moulding or sheet metal stamping.

b. Integrated Computer Analysis

This is based on the recognition that steps in the development of a manufactured product are interrelated and can be modeled effectively by using computers. This relationship comes about not only from the characteristics of the part being fabricated but also from the processes, specifications, instructions and data that define and direct each step in the manufacturing process.

Example 2.1 Catastrophic Design Errors

In 1986, the General Electric Company (GE) marketed a new refrigerator. Their engineers were confident that their new compressor would help them leapfrog the Japanese; yet, in 1988 they declared a loss of $450 million. What went wrong?

The story began in 1981, when the market share and profits of the GE Appliance Division were falling. GE was using 1950's technology to make compressors. Each compressor took 65 minutes to make, whereas Italian and Japanese companies made theirs in 25 minutes, with lower labour rates.

The GE engineers said they could reduce the part count by one-third by replacing the reciprocating compressor with a rotary compressor, like the one used in their air conditioners since 1957. Furthermore, they said they could make it easier to machine by using powdered-metal instead of steel and cast iron for two parts, thereby cutting manufacturing costs. Although powdered-metal had failed in GE air conditioners a decade earlier, no one on the new design team had experience with this previous failure, and evidently, they felt no need for advice from people involved in a failed project. They also turn down advice from Japanese and American consultants with experience in designing rotary compressors.

Six hundred compressors were "life tested" by running them continuously for two months under temperatures and pressures that were supposed to simulate five years of actual use. Not a single compressor failed, and the good news was passed up the management ladder. During testing, technicians noticed that many of the motor windings were discoloured from heat, bearing surfaces appeared worn, and the sealed lubricating oil seemed to be breaking down. This bad news was not passed up the management ladder!

GE offered a five year warranty on the refrigerators, but they could not wait five years before beginning full-scale manufacturing. Evaluating a five -year life span based on two months of testing is tricky, so the original test plan was to field-test some refrigerators for two years before full-scale manufacturing began. Pressure to stay on schedule reduced this test time to nine months.

By the end of 1986, GE had produced over one million new compressors. Everyone was ecstatic over the new refrigerators; however, in July of 1987 the first refrigerator failed. Quickly thereafter came an avalanche of failures, and the engineers could not fix the problems. In December of 1987, GE started buying foreign compressors for the refrigerators. Finally, in the summer of 1988 the engineers made their report. The two powdered-metal parts were wearing excessively, increasing friction, burning up the oil, and causing the compressors to fail. GE management decided to redesign the compressor without the powdered-metal parts, and in 1989 they voluntarily replaced over one million defective compressors.

The designers who specified powdered-metal made a mistake, but everyone makes mistakes. Systems engineering is supposed to reveal such problems early in the design cycle or at least in the testing phase. 2.3 CROSS FUNCTIONAL TEAMWORK IN ORGANIZATIONS2.3.1 Team Work

To make a group means follow a deliberate action to identify and eliminate the difficulties, to make a good work. The absence of objectives creates feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction for the incapacity to change things. Teammates accuse other people for their mistakes and inactivity.

Team Work is a plural process; it cannot be made by a person. When workers are meeting to make groups, each person gives their knowledge, motivations, values and capacities. The ways in which these people get involve could be positive or negative. In some cases, members neutralize other ones and the result is the absence of effectiveness, or passivity. In other cases, they sum their efforts totally or partially. But, there exists another possibility: the interaction makes a transcendental state that exceeds the contribution of any of the members and the sum of all of them. When this happens the team has developed synergy. The total is superior to the sum of the parts. The group exceeds the sum of the individual contributions; this is the meaning of team work.

We can see an example of Team Work functions: A boss and his employer are going to make a decision. Both of them were studying a technical paper that contains tips to facilitate the situation, the data and the logic necessary to a complex, but necessary decision. Suppose that they will take a test to show how much they know about the technical paper. In the test (100 points) one makes 70 points and the other one gets 50 points.

When discussion begins, they can neutralize each other and they will be confused about the situation, the data and the logic necessary to make a good decision. The media can be reducing to 60 or 50 at the end of the discussion. It means that they are going to be in an incomprehension state. Thats not impressive.

In other hand, they can joy their knowledge and get in comprehension levels. In this case, the action represents a 60: above the decision that could take the team mate less prepare, but below the decision of the best prepare of them. Thats not impressive too.

Exist a third possibility: if each of them put his knowledge to the disposition to the other they can resolve the situation using the free and sincere dialogue. The final point is going to be 99. Thats impressive.

Synergy Team Work is an intelligent group working together. Team Work brings impressive results if the members of the group give all their dedication, effort, information and recommendations to get the goals.

The project team approach has been proven to be the most successful organizational structure used to implement new product development. One of the most important factor in the future success of the concurrent engineering effort is the acquired knowledge of ilities in the design and development of engineering team.

The goal of concurrent engineering is the interactive work of different disciplines that affect a product to make it better.

Minimize the product life cycle

Decrease product cost

Maximize product quality

Team work

One of the principal tools of concurrent engineering in the accomplishment of its goal is team work. This is where human resources are working together with the objective of surviving and having success in the actual global market; recognizing its sophistication, and that it is highly competitive.

For this reason is imperative to improve our products and service, taking advantage of all the opportunities; from simple improvements through greater and not so frequent scientific and technological innovation. The complexity of organizational processes today, requires individuals with specific knowledge in the different areas of the evaluated process, and in the techniques and tools of the team work. This is the most effective way to obtain and use the experience and knowledge of the employees to provide increased quality of processes, services and products.

2.3.2 WHAT IS A TEAM?A team is a small group of persons with:

a clear, defined and significant purpose

managerial support

the responsibility to accomplish with an established rules of work

embarrassing in the contribution of time, abilities and knowledge for a common goal

A team will constitute and develop with expert care. It could adopt a lot more of the sum of individual as an entity. Some teams will pass an unknown barrier and will reach to a phase of super execution.

An important aspect when the team development stated and its success is the fact that they should count with a support structure so much from the administration as internal and external counsellors.

The four fundamentally different types of teams we just looked at are based on two defining characteristics: the need for coordination of actions among team members and the degree of specialized or discrete skills needed within the team to perform. Regardless of the type of team, there are common characteristics all team configurations have that clearly differentiate them from groups or collections of individuals. This is an important distinction. Many companies are using the bowling or home-care model to form groups, but in no way have they created a fully functioning team.

A team has a common:

Purpose

Understanding of how the activities of the team link to the company

Awareness of the customer needs that the teams efforts are addressing

Understanding of team member roles

Information-sharing, problem-solving and decision-making mechanisms

Set of operating guidelines or norms of behavior

Regardless of the type of team, these factors remain common- they are the defining qualities of teaming. Without them, there is no team, merely a collection of individuals.

2.3.3 MULTIFUNCTIONAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TEAM

In the best form of basic concurrent engineering, each product is developed by a multifunctional product development team (PDT). The PDT makes all decisions about the product design, production system, and field-support system. Although the PDT must grow and then later shrink in size and, in so doing, change its composition somewhat, there is never any sudden change. In particular, at the transitions in process phases, there are not any sudden changes in the PDT. Continuity is maintained; throwing results over the wall is avoided. All decisions are made with the full participation of the people who have all of the relevant knowledge.

Basic concurrent engineering is best carried out by a multifunctional product development team (PDT) led by a strong product manager. All functions of the corporation should participate. People who are doing significant work for the specific product development program should be part of the PDT while they are doing the programs work. There is a vast psychological difference between performing a task within a support group and performing it as a member of the PDT. As a PDT member, the contributor will:

understand the specific requirements,

have the necessary close communications with other members of the PDT, and

be dedicated to the utilization of the task results to make design decisions.

All three of these benefits are much less likely to materialize if the contributor remains outside the PDT. It is important that the people on the PDT from each function be able to:

represent the knowledge of that function, and

gain the commitment of that function to the decisions that are made.

Dysfunction will occur if the information is not provided or is wrong, or if the function subsequently disowns the decisions and wants major changes. For example, if the PDT decides to use an aluminium die casting and if later, when the product enters into production, the production operations people want a fibre-reinforced polymer part, then rework of the development will become rampant. Strong, complete multifunctional product development team is essential for success.

Some people will stay on the PDT throughout the development program, while others will be on the team only during the phase or task that requires their expertise. The important criterion is that there should not be any sudden changes in the composition or size of the PDT, since that would reduce teamwork and cause lack of continuity.

Even while a member of a team, the individual still does much independent work, but the work is done for the team. Membership in the team makes the goals of individual work more holistic. The individuals work contributes effectively to the overall development program.

Although we refer to the team, it is actually a team of teams. The chief engineer who leads the PDT and the managers who report directly to him or her constitutes one team. They are responsible for everything related to the product and its development program. They include the subsystem leaders, for each product subsystem has a team. Many critical interfaces have a dedicated team. Teams are formed wherever the new product needs them. Although the complete PDT for a large, complex product may have several hundred members, it is rare for any one operational team to have more than 20 members. Many have only a few members. The formation of the best interlocking structure of teams is a key success factor.

2.3.4 TEN PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESSFUL TEAMS

Ian Morley (1990) has developed 10 principles of teamwork in doing total development work:

1. Select cohesive teams, based on sentiments of mutual liking and respect for each others expertise.

2. Bring specialists from all major functional areas into the PDT

3. Ensure a common vision of the concurrent process.

4. Organize controlled convergence to solutions that everyone understands and everyone accepts.

5. Organize vigilant information processing and encourage actively open-minded thinking. Avoid the facile, premature consensus.

6. Maintain the best balance between individual and group work. Let individuals do the things that individuals do best-for example, the initial generation of new concepts.

7. Use systematic methods.

8. Use formal and informal communication.

9. Select at least some of the members according to how well suited they are to the specific type of development work. One example is how static or dynamic the concepts underlying the work are. A person who is proficient in applying standards to rapidly completed static designs may have difficulty with dynamic conceptual work. The opposite is also true.

10. Provide principled leadership. The leader must emphasize improved process, making it visible to the team. He or she must take the primary responsibility for helping to empower members of the team.

The organization and leadership on the multifunctional product development team help to develop the successful practice of Morleys 10 principles. If these and the principles are practiced, then any of the three product-focused modes can be successful-heavyweight product manager, project execution team, or independent PDT.

2.3.5 ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN AND PLANNING

In September 1985, the SESC and the executive staff participated in two simultaneous engineering vision and implementation strategy development workshops to assure alignment prior to establishing simultaneous engineering teams. One result was the shared vision developed simultaneous engineering as follows:Simultaneous engineering is a process in which appropriate disciplines are committed to work interactively to conceive, approve, develop, and implement product programs that meet pre-determined Cadillac objectives.

A further development was the pyramid structure. Cadillac has adopted the pyramid as the symbol Simultaneous Engineering. At the base or foundation, is the Cadillac executive staff who supports and nurtures the process with the ultimate objective of satisfying our customers-at the top of the pyramid.

The role of top management in the simultaneous engineering environment is to:

Sanction the simultaneous engineering process

Set simultaneous engineering policy and direction

Provide the environment in which simultaneous engineering can flourish

Any time an organization sets out to make a significant change in the way it does business, it is going to take a great deal of time and education for all employees to make it work. But, without top managements leadership, support, patience, and commitment nothing will be accomplished. Next on the pyramid is the steering committee whose job is to:

Plan and implement simultaneous engineering policy and direction

Allocate the necessary resources

Serve as liaison to communicate the process to the total organization

Monitor and lead the process

EMBED PBrush

Next are vehicle teams that are responsible for managing all steps of product development in their vehicle program. Each vehicle team comprises members representing all staffs of the organization. The roles of the vehicle team are to:

Develop the vehicle strategy including defining the target market and specific demographics. This vehicle strategy must be consistent with the overall divisional strategy.

Establish the overall vehicle goals required to meet this strategy.

Manage the vehicle content. Provide complete, consistent, stable, and timely program definition for each vehicle.

Assure the needs and expectations of the customers are met or exceeded.

Manage the continuous improvement of the vehicles quality, reliability, durability, and performance.

As Cadillac developed the structure for simultaneous engineering, the car was sectioned into specific vehicle systems and created six corresponding vehicle system management teams. These were the exterior component/body mechanical, chassis/power train application, seats and interior trim, electric/electronic, body-in-white, instrument panel/heating, and air-conditioning systems. The role of each one of these vehicle system management teams was to manage their vehicle system in order to optimize the business decisions that are made in that area of the vehicle.

The vehicle system management teams and the vehicle teams are in the same layer of the pyramid. This symbolized their partnership and interdependence to accomplish the task.

The product development and improvement teams (PDITs) are responsible for the actual design of components that are part of the six vehicle systems. Each PDIT has varying core memberships, depending on its purpose, but can draw members from any area of the organization and suppliers. One hundred percent of the vehicle is covered by these simultaneous engineering teams.

In some companies the simultaneous engineering approach calls for product development teams (PDTs). These teams include process and product engineers in the development phase of products, and then disband when the particular product goes into production. Unlike these PDTs, Cadillacs PDITs have cradle to grave responsibility for the productions and continuous quality improvement of that component or part. Cadillac PDITs focus on all business aspects of their assigned portion of the vehicle: quality, cost, timing, technology, reliability, and profitability. It is as if they are running their own business. Cadillac eventually created 66 PDITs with an average of eight team members.

The structure of the pyramid is similar to a matrix organization structure although Cadillac has formally maintained its centralized functional structure. Each team member still reports to a staff area and has other assignments as well. With the exception of the vehicle teams, all other simultaneous engineering teams elect their own chairpersons and do not have a manager as in typical matrix structure. The teams receive expectations and leadership from the next team down in the pyramid.

Each of the vehicle systems management teams is responsible for business decisions concerning its systems, as well as determining what vehicle subsystems require the formation of PDITs. Each PDIT, in turn, has similar business decision-making responsibilities at a component or subsystem level.

The vision was developed and the structure was determined. Roles and responsibilities were defined and the strategy for simultaneous engineering was ready for the next stage of implementation. The new expectations of team members would require them to learn about other part of the business. In addition, most team members were familiar with planning and decision-making in the context of their individual staff, but not with cross-staff teams. Normally this type of decision-making is not experienced in a centralized organization except at the executive staff level. The need to develop consensus decision-making skills and teamwork was acknowledged. A great need existed to provide education and training.

2.4 IMPLEMENTATION

Change takes time and education. In November of 1985, an organization event was held to communicate the plan. It was considered important to communicate the design for simultaneous engineering to those who had originally met in January as a follow-up since they had empowered the steering committee. It was also considered important to communicate to significant others who would eventually be called upon to staff the simultaneous engineering teams. The meeting was designed to be interactive. All questions were documented and a response was given either by the panel of SESC members, executive staff, or included in forthcoming documentation of the work session.

At the November meeting, the idea of forming Vehicle System Management Teams (VSMT) based on various sections of the car was shared. At this time each staff representative on the SESC began to consider who should be assigned from their staff to these new simultaneous engineering teams. Although each staff retained the authority for their own selections, they received input from members of the SESC. Early in 1986, four-day kick-off workshops were held for the formation of VSMT. The design for these workshops included five sections:

1. Background Information

2. Cultural Change

3. Business and System Information

4. Planning

5. Esprit de Corps

The executive staff and SESC demonstrated leadership and support by participating first in the workshop in January, followed by VSMTs in February. The final day of the VSMT workshops included highly creative non-traditional presentations that were attended by both SESC and the executive staffs. The final day presentations were an organizational event. There were celebrations and the demonstrated enthusiasm further nurtured the evolving teamwork culture.

The newly formed VSMTs began identifying appropriate product development and improvement teams for their system. Appropriate members were notified of their selection and in April, PDIT kick-off workshops began. They were similar to those for VSMTs but included more emphasis on problem solving techniques. They, unlike the four day VSMT kick off, were delivered in three phases:

Phase 1: Simultaneous engineering, business, and systems information.

Phase 2: Team building and planning

Phase 3: Problem solving (applied to product quality).

2.5 PROJECT TEAM STRUCTURE

Project team structure consists of an autonomous project team, existing independently of the rest of the organization. The project team is assembled for a specific project under the action of the product manager. The team is thus temporary and will be disbanded when its project is complete.

Sometimes we can find design or products with special requirements that are not encompassed within one or more of the functions. This will lead to cooperative efforts of marketing, production, engineering, and others as appropriate; as well as assistance from the accounting legal, and contracting staffs. When it is an important new effort, a dynamic and capable person from the upper levels of middle management is selected to take responsibility for this unique activity. A project is organized around this project manager, and then a few specialized assistants are provided and a project team is formed. The project manager exercises direct and autonomous control over the various discipline groups and is responsible for the coordination and monitoring of the effort of the team. Since most major organizational functions will be affected by this team, it is typically removed from the functional organizations structure.

A multiple project organization is needed when the number of projects increases. There is a definite limit to the number of major projects any traditional organization can support. As the number of projects increases the managerial load on the general manager increases to the point where he can no longer cope.

Advantages of project team structures

Good at responding well to an immediate project need.

Flexibility

Responsibility for success of project clearly identified.

Releases top management from micromanaging operations, so that the management can focus on the overall company strategy rather than detailed nuts and bolts.

Disadvantages of project team structures

The actual organizational power and authority of the team manager may be a delicate issue.

Greater administrative overhead.

In-group vs. Out-group mentality may develop.

2.5.1 TEAM MEETINGSIn spite of the different means in which a team can communicate such as memoranda, telephone calls, faxes and meetings; the last one is the communication method where the majority of decisions occur. This bring us to evaluate constructive meetingsA. A constructive meeting must have a clearly defined purpose, and realistic expectations.

B. In a constructive meeting a well thought-out agenda is critical.

The agenda will be the instrument to assign the corresponding discussion period of each topic along the meeting. It also allows us to identify the issues with priority.

Finally, the agenda will not permit the rapid discussion of productive decisions and the long exchange of in fructuous and repeated subject that have hot reach to a consensus. Note we define consensus as the general agreement or concord, harmony; and it is the goal of all meetings.

C. A constructive meeting requires advance preparation by all participants.

Provide agenda and all informational materials prior to meeting and request that participants come prepared to act.

D. Tasks that are better accomplished by individuals or small groups.

E. In a constructive meeting, balanced participation is promoted.

The balanced participation will lead more rapidly to a consensus on solutions.

F. During a constructive meeting an environment of respect is maintained.

The environment of respect should be remarked when a critic emerges during the team activities.

Some criteria for productive criticism are:

Describe, do not judge.

Be specific.

Consider the needs from all the involve individuals during the action.

Do not talk while another member has the floor.

Direct the critic to an observe behaviour and not to the individual.

A different point of view should stand out when the person receive a critic: Maintain the calm, breathing deeply during the time the critics will be done.

Listen well and verify the amount of understanding.

Recognize the valid points and be thanks for the action.

Finally the repercussion of a code of cooperation is habitual. It is prominent the interaction between the roles of the meeting participants, the meeting structure and the interpersonal skill recognizing them as the elements of an effective meeting.

2.6 BENEFITS OF CE

Concurrent Engineering is a system of practices that companies can employ so that their engineering and production departments work together in the most streamlined manner possible. When the processes between the two groups are organized correctly through a systematic methodology, the work flow and exchange of information is extremely efficient and problems that would otherwise slow down the processes are avoided. Potential benefits of Concurrent Engineering include a shorter cycle to get new product to market, a quicker turnaround time for issues with product quality that require engineering time and a smaller number of changes made to a product or its process during its life cycle. Another benefit is that employees then require less time learning how to produce new or improved products, thereby enabling engineers to have higher visibility when it comes to knowing exactly what is going on in the shop floor operations. Concurrent engineering also produces a continual streamlining of processes so they can continue to be consistently duplicated. Concurrent Engineering focuses on the process by which a product is manufactured. The practices also prioritize the time spent putting together a manufacturing process which works to bring a quality product to market quickly and at a reasonable cost. The process is considered as important as the product design itself. For example, even if you have the blueprint for the next iphone in your head, what value is it if you do not take the time to detail the process of bringing your idea to fruition? So without a validated plan, essentially you plan to fail. The main ingredients of Concurrent Engineering are integrated tools and data. Though engineering and manufacturing are closely related, each department's tools and data are often managed separately, which can lead to inefficiencies. With Concurrent Engineering, the manufacturing data models are created directly from their engineering predecessors with tightly integrated change management. Integrated processes for managing changes and digital validation of the product and process streamline shop floor changes. Previously, the manufacturing shop floor would have to basically work around engineering. Often, changes would be tested on the shop floor, only to have to be redone and reworked on later. Integrating the processes eliminates this. Having a collaborative culture and environment also allows product engineers to spend a lot of time on the shop floor effectively evaluating the success of their designs. When the value in the corporate culture changes to emphasize reducing the number of changes in the process rather than being able to pump changes out more quickly, then Concurrent Engineering strategies works at their best. So, as complex as the technology and methodology might sound, it basically circles around one idea, that of working together.

CHAPTER THREE3.0 METHODOLGY

The purpose of this study is to determine the level of awareness, factors, benefits, constraints and readiness of CE in Nigeria as a developing construction industry. This chapter therefore explains the method and mode used for collecting datas.

In order to access CE in the Nigeria construction industry, a case was carried out by using questionnaires which was administrated to Consultancy firms, Contracting firms, Materials suppliers, and Clients. One of the reason for carrying out this case study is the fact that, it will help to solve current problem through an examination of what happened in the past and which is happening now, and this will save a lot of time.

In this study, questionnaires were designed to sample relevant information needed to access the feasibility of CE in the Nigeria construction industry.

The five-point Linker-type scale was used to measure a range of opinions from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree in the designed questionnaires. The significant agreement or otherwise with the notion being tested was determined by adopting the mid-point value of the index (that is 3) as the hypothesized mean (Coakes and Steed, 2001). This implies that any result significantly different from this uncommitted or unsure value was assumed to be either positive or negative to the notion being tested (Pullin and Haidar, 2003). A total of one hundred firms comprising construction firms, architectural, engineering and quantity surveying consultants, and Clients was randomly chosen and was used as for confidence level of at least 99% recommended by Rea & Parker (1997). A total 100 questionnaires were distributed in Edo State and Warri in Delta State, South-South region of Nigeria, out of which sixty five were collected. In accordance with Idrus & Newman (2002), a response rate of 30% is good enough in construction studies and Ellhag and Boussabaine (1999) considers this response rate adequate.3.1 METHOD OF ANALYSIS

Chi-square is a statistical test commonly used to compare observed data with data we would expect to obtain according to a specific hypothesis, was used in analysing the collected data to determine if there is significance difference between the excepted and observed results (datas). This significance difference is called the null hypothesis and is express as follows;

Where O= Observed results

E= Excepted results

Degree of Freedom (D.F) = (No. of columns -1) (No. of rows -1)Excepted results (values) for each cell = (row total column total) /Grad total (N)

NOTE;

a. If the p value for the calculated is p > 0.05, accept your hypothesis. 'The deviation is small enough that chance alone accounts for it. A p value of 0.6, for example, means that there is a 60% probability that any deviation from expected is due to chance only. This is within the range of acceptable deviation.

b. If the p value for the calculated is p < 0.05, reject your hypothesis, and conclude that some factor other than chance is operating for the deviation to be so great. For example, a p value of 0.01 means that there is only a 1% chance that this deviation is due to chance alone. Therefore, other factors must be involved.

CHAPTER FOUR

4.0 RESULTS

The result of this study are presented and discussed in this chapter. The major purpose of this was to examine:

1. Level of awareness of Concurrent Engineering.

2. Benefits of implementing Concurrent Engineering

3. Factors that will affect it implementation

4. Constraint in applying Concurrent Engineering.4.1 RESPONDENTS PROFILEFig 4.1

From the total 65 respondents received, 22 (33%) were contractors, 18 (27.7%) were consultants, 10 (10%) were client, 11 (17%) were material suppliers and while the other 4 (6.2%) were suc-contractors.

Fig 4.2; Level of information, communication and technology in use by firmsFrom the above chart, telephone is the most used followed by the internet and the least is fax.Age of respondents organisation

Fig 4.3; Age of respondents organizationThe figure above shows that 33% of the respondents had over 10 years of professional experience. As many as 18% had less than 5 years, while only 24% had over 30% years ofBelow are data samples collected from Consultants, Clients, Contractor and Material supplier from Edo State and Warri in Delta State.RESEARCH QUESTION 1: I about concurrent engineeringoptionsstrongly AAgreeNo optionstrongly DDisagreerow total

consultant11220318

client0004610

mat & supplier0005611

contractors30621021

column total4128112560

fofefo-fe(fo-fe)2(fo-fe)2 /fe

11.2-0.20.040.033333

00.666667-0.66666670.44444440.666667

00.733333-0.73333330.53777780.733333

31.41.62.561.828571

123.68.470.5619.6

02-242

02.2-2.24.842.2

04.2-4.217.644.2

22.4-0.40.160.066667

01.333333-1.33333331.77777781.333333

01.466667-1.46666672.15111111.466667

62.83.210.243.657143

03.3-3.310.893.3

41.8333332.166666674.69444442.560606

52.0166672.983333338.90027784.413361

23.85-1.853.42250.888961

37.5-4.520.252.7

64.1666671.833333333.36111110.806667

64.5833331.416666672.00694440.437879

108.751.251.56250.178571

53.07176

Since our x2 statistic value (53.07176) exceed the critical value for 0.05 probability level, we can reject the null hypothesis that the professionals in the industry are not aware of CE.RESEARCH QUESTION 2: I participated in its usage;optionsstrongly AAgreeNo optionstrongly DDisagreerow total

consultant01053018

client0314210

mat & supplier2102611

contractors18130022

column total322199861

fofefo-fe(fo-fe)2(fo-fe)2 /fe

00.885246-0.88524590.78366030.885246

00.491803-0.49180330.24187050.491803

20.5409841.459016392.12872883.934923

11.081967-0.08196720.00671860.00621

106.4918033.5081967212.3074441.895844

33.606557-0.60655740.36791190.102012

13.967213-2.96721318.80435372.219279

87.9344260.065573770.00429990.000542

55.606557-0.60655740.36791190.065622

13.114754-2.11475414.47218491.435807

03.42623-3.426229511.7390493.42623

136.8524596.1475409837.792265.515138

32.6557380.34426230.11851650.044627

41.475412.524590166.37355554.319854

21.6229510.377049180.14216610.087597

03.245902-3.245901610.5358773.245902

02.360656-2.36065575.57269552.360656

21.3114750.688524590.47406610.361475

61.4426234.5573770520.76968614.39717

02.885246-2.88524598.32464392.885246

47.68118

Since our x2 statistic value (47.68118) exceed the critical value for 0.05 probability

level, we can reject the null hypothesis that the professionals in the industry are not aware if they have participated in it usage.

RESEARCH QUESTION 3: Government new policies will raise