Research on Concurrent Engineering in Product Design

Li Hongjun Mechanical and Electrical Engineering department

Wuhan Textile university Hubei, Wuhan 43007

lihongjun@foxmail.com

Shou Tiancheng Mechanical and Electrical Engineering department

Wuhan Textile university Hubei, Wuhan 43007

Abstract—Concurrent Engineering is a new mode of product development which emerging in recent years, and it will be paid attention by many foreign research institutions and manufacturing enterprises. According to the characteristic of product design, the development process of product design based-on concurrent engineering is brought forward in the thesis, and the scope, characteristics and applications of product design based-on concurrent engineering are researched, and propose concurrent design.

Keywords- concurrent engineering; concurrent design; life cycle of products; reduce costs

I. INTRODUCTION Along with the formation of global market, enterprises are

facing the severe situation of international market competition. Only through continually cut down product development time, improve quality, reduce costs and improve service ,the enterprises can in an invincible position in fierce market competition. In order to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises, China's most enterprises have changed varying degrees technological. However, it does not bring the desired benefits to every business through simply purchasing the computer platforms, application software and advanced equipment, the key is that integrating and optimized operating the various departments of enterprises as an integral part. The overall situation of China's economic reform is well. Especially financial, business and service sector growth has been very stable, but development state of some big-and-middle-sized enterprises is disproportionate to the overall development. At present, the domestic manufacturing has met a great difficulty in the development process.

At this stage, product design system has matured, but it is disjoint with the engineering design and manufacturing. Largely, product design and engineering design of the current is still a traditional serial process. It does not form a real efficient communication and interaction between designers and engineers. For the characteristics of contemporary product design, based on economic rationality of product development and feasibility of technology. In this paper, it puts forward that the concurrent engineering blend into the design of the product and it can be fully considered the product life-cycle factors in the early stages of product development for reducing product development cycle, improve product quality, reduce product cost.

II. RESEARCH SITUATION OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING

A. Research situation of concurrent engineering at abroad Concurrent engineering has been extensive used in USA,

Germany and Japan. The field includes cars, plane, computer, machine, electronic and so on and concurrent engineering is a important mean for improving quality and reducing cost. For example, the center of concurrent engineering of University of Virginia in USA develops news type plane, so that the wings of the development cycle shortened by 60%.Patriot air defense missile systems are also manufactured through concurrent engineering method in the late 80. Germany's Siemens AG, Public Communication Networks Group (Siemens AG, Public Communication Network Group) use concurrent engineering methods in the development of complex electronic system, achieve remarkable results, pose 320 reports in the simulation phase, find and correcting many errors.

B. Research situation of concurrent engineering at hom In China, the development of concurrent engineering as a

new phase of CIMS, has been widely concerned about the number of companies, its study was listed the contents of the field of automation which been primary studied of a national 863 program in the end of 1992 .Under the leadership of Ministry of Science and Technology and the Group of Experts of 863/CIMS themes ,in July 1995, The person who comes from Tsinghua University, Huazhong University of Technology, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Aerospace Industry Corporation 2 Institute has composed a technology research team which called "863/CIMS key technologies of concurrent engineering ", carrying out the key technologies of research and application of concurrent engineering. After nearly two years research, and finally they get significant progress. The project has specialty in applications, and in some key technologies it has reached the international advanced level, at present, the project has passed appraisal. Although concurrent engineering has produced such dramatic results in practical application , but there are still some difficult problems, such as: increases the difficulty of the current work in the design , the master model, supporting concurrent engineering ,has not yet unified, engineering database has not yet fully mature and so on.

This paper is sponsored by CYP, the project ID is: 09YJC720034

978-1-4244-5326-9/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE

III. CONCURRENT ENGINEERING CONCEPTS IN DESIGN Concurrent Engineering (concurrent engineering, CE) is an

engineering methodology, standing the point of product design and the whole process of manufacturing, breaks the traditional organizational structure, emphasizes work together, reconstructs the development process of products and uses advanced design methodologies, considers all the factors in its later development in the early stages of product design, in order to improve the rate of product design, manufacturing, thus greatly shorten product development cycles, reduce costs, enhance their competitiveness.

The core content of concurrent engineering, including process reengineering, product development teams’ reconstruction, digital product definition and collaborative work environment, and the integrated framework for concurrent engineering which achieve these four aspects of an integrated support environment. Its guiding principle is to reduce the level of product structure, produce more products with minimal parts. Concurrent engineering inherited a lot of sophisticated design ideas and methods, such as standardization, group design, organically integrating these design ideas and design methods.

Concurrent engineering which is a new concept to guide product development is a fundamental improvement to traditional product development approach. The core of concurrent engineering is the process integration. Concurrent engineering is more focused on the synergy of time. Concurrent Engineering can improve the processes of product development to achieve the number definitions and information integration of product life cycle ,adopt new quality concepts to meet the changing needs of users, and use new computer-aided tools to ensure that make the right decisions in early process of the product development and effectively reduce the design changes and reduce the total cost, thus reducing product design cycles, improve product design quality, enhance response capability of the business-to-market. This paper proposes a model of product design which based on concurrent engineering, as shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1 Concurrent Engineering Product Design Model

The model provide all aspects of all the characteristics of the product information for the product life cycle, such as: user requirements, product features, design, manufacturing, materials, assembly, cost and evaluation of characteristic information, and these characteristic information is the foundation and key for achieving product design, process

design , manufacturing, assembly and testing and other development activities.

IV. APPLICATION OF CONCURRENT ENGINEERING IN DESIGN The concept of engineering applications, as shown in

Figure 2, is necessary to establish an integrated system which based on concurrent engineering, this system which based on a computer local area network establishes a product code database and can store pro/engineer model file, and participants can exchanges through the network .Through this system setting up ,participants can take into account many factors in design process, and static describe the design process, quantitative and qualitative analysis the design process, so that all participants know that what they need do and what kind of tasks they need complete, and at the same time ,the designers, engineers and technicians, process manufacturing personnel consult with all issues, then the participants work together and design a good product.

Figure 2 motorcycles example based on concurrent

engineering

V. CONCLUSION At present, these themes above are the difficulty and focal

point in study of concurrent engineering. With further study and gradually resolved for this issues, it will promote to expand depth and breadth of concurrent engineering.

Therefore, compared with developed countries, the research and application of concurrent engineering at home starts lately, but the starting point of study is higher, research efforts are also increasing. Although the overall level is not high, but in some cases we also have our own advantages. So, domestic enterprises should be analysis foreign successful experiences and lessons of failure, utilize fully existing and mature research results, combined with the actual needs of enterprises, vigorously innovation, to develop a new high-tech theories, new technologies and new products.

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