What is Concurrent Engineering?

Concurrent Engineering Concurrent Engineering is a systematic method and integrated technology for parallel and integrated processing of products and their related processes (including manufacturing processes and support processes). It requires product developers to consider the entire process of the product life cycle from the beginning of the design. Not only the performance of the product, such as quality, cost, and user requirements, but also the quality of each process and service related to the product. . It shortens the design cycle by improving the design quality, improves the production efficiency by optimizing the production process, and reduces the production cost by reducing the consumption of the entire life cycle of the product, such as raw material consumption and man-hour consumption in the product production process. ^[1]

Concurrent engineering

(Production project type name)

It requires product developers to consider the factors (such as function, manufacturing, assembly, job scheduling, quality, cost, maintenance and user needs, etc.) in each stage of the product's entire life cycle (from concept formation to product retirement) from the beginning. , And emphasize the collaborative work of various departments, through the establishment of effective information exchange and communication mechanisms between decision makers, comprehensive consideration of the impact of various relevant factors, so that problems that may occur in subsequent links can be found in the early stages of design, And it has been solved, so that the product has good manufacturability, assemblability, maintainability and recycling characteristics in the design stage, which minimizes design repetition and shortens design, production preparation and manufacturing time.

Generally includes:

Parallel engineering management and process control technology,

In 1988, the National Institute of Defense Analysis (IDA-Institute of Defense Analyze) completely proposed concurrent engineering (CE-

Concurrent engineering has the following characteristics:

1. Parallelism based on integrated manufacturing.

2. Parallel and orderly.

3. Group collaboration.

4. Engineering-oriented design.

5. Computer simulation technology. ^[2]

Concurrent engineering emphasizes process-oriented and object-oriented. A new product is a complete process from conception to production. Traditional serial engineering methods are based on British political economists more than 200 years ago

In traditional serial engineering, the evaluation of each department's work often depends on whether the task assigned to it is completed well. As far as design is concerned, it mainly depends on whether the design work is novel, creative, and whether the product has excellent performance. For other departments, it depends on whether his job is done well. Concurrent engineering emphasizes system integration and overall optimization. It does not fully pursue the optimization of individual departments, local processes, and individual components, but pursues global optimization and the overall competitiveness of the product. For products, this kind of competitiveness is determined by the product's TQCS comprehensive indicators-delivery time (quality), quality (cost) and service (service). The emphasis is different in different situations. At this stage, delivery time may be a key factor, sometimes quality, sometimes price, and sometimes several comprehensive indicators of them. For each product, the enterprise has a reasonable positioning of a competitive goal, so the concurrent engineering entertainments carry out the entire product development activities around this goal. As long as the overall optimization and global goals are achieved, the optimal work of each department is not pursued. Therefore, the evaluation of the entire work is based on the overall optimization results.

^[2]

The concurrent engineering environment enables everyone involved in product development to instantly exchange information with each other to overcome various problems caused by factors such as different regions and organizations, the complexity of products, and the lack of interchangeable tools. In the development process, a flexible and elastic method should be used to target different product development objects, adopt different concurrent engineering techniques, and gradually adjust the development environment. The development environment of concurrent engineering mainly includes the following aspects.

(1) A unified product model guarantees the uniqueness of product information and must have a unified enterprise knowledge base so that team members can work together in the same "language".

(2) A set of high-performance computer networks. Group members can perform simulations on their workstations or microcomputers, or use their own systems.

(3) An interactive, good user interface system integration, with a unified database and knowledge base, enables team members to participate in or solve their own design issues from different perspectives at the same time.

The development organization is composed of three levels. The highest level is composed of the heads of functional departments and project managers to manage development funds, processes and plans. The second level is composed of managers of major functional departments and representatives of functional groups. Regular meetings are held regularly. It is an operation layer and is composed of functional groups.

Choose a suitable product data management (PDM) system. PDM is an integration of process data management technology that integrates data management capabilities, network communication capabilities, and process control capabilities. It can track and save product design processes. The PDM system is a basic platform for implementing concurrent engineering. It integrates all the information and processes related to the product, and will effectively define the entire life cycle related data from concept design, calculation analysis, detailed design, process design, manufacturing, sales, maintenance to product scrap. Organize and manage to keep product data up-to-date, consistent, shared, and secure throughout the product lifecycle. PDM system should have electronic warehouse, process and

First, the product design work process is subdivided into different phases; second, when the resources required for the work in multiple phases cannot be shared, a concurrent engineering method can be used; finally, the work in the subsequent phases must depend on the results of the previous phases as When entering conditions, you can make assumptions about the previous work before the two can run in parallel. Intermediate coordination must be inserted in the meantime, and the intermediate results should be used for verification. The deviation between the verification results and the assumptions is the basis for subsequent work adjustment.

Concurrent engineering plays an integral role in advanced manufacturing technology, which is mainly reflected in two aspects:

1. Concurrent engineering is supported by the technical support of CAD, CAM, CAPP, etc., and the original and separate tasks are overlapped and overlapped in time and space, making full use of the original technology, and absorbing the current rapid development of computer technology and information technology The results make it the basis for advanced manufacturing technology.

Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) refers to fully considering the manufacturability and assemblability of products during the product design stage, so as to shorten product development cycles, lower product development costs and Product development with higher product development quality.

Obviously, to successfully implement and carry out concurrent engineering, it is inseparable from product design for manufacturing and assembly. Only by starting with product design can we achieve the goals of concurrent engineering to improve quality, reduce costs, and shorten development time. It can be said that product development for manufacturing and assembly is the core part of concurrent engineering and the most critical technology in concurrent engineering. Having mastered product development technology for manufacturing and assembly, concurrent engineering has been more than half successful.

· In 1988, the United States defense analysis and research used weapon production as the background, analyzed the traditional production model, and for the first time introduced the concept of concurrent engineering. especially

Concurrent engineering has evolved from theory to practicality. More and more internationally renowned companies involved in aviation, aerospace, automotive, electronics, machinery and other fields have achieved significant benefits through the implementation of concurrent engineering.

For example, the United States Lockheed Missile and Space Corporation (LMSC) in October 1992 accepted the development of a new model of the United States Department of Defense (DOD) for "Thaad in the Theater" missile development, the company s missile development It usually takes 5 years, and the concurrent engineering method will ultimately reduce the product development cycle by 60%. The specific implementation is as follows:

Improve product development processes. In the early stages of project work, LMSC spent a lot of energy analyzing various processes in Thaad development and optimizing these processes and developing process support systems. Adopt integrated parallel design method.

Realize information integration and sharing. During the design and experiment phase, some design, engineering changes, tests, and experiments are all entered into the database. And each application system must achieve effective information integration and sharing.

If China's manufacturing industry wants to enter the world competition, it must strengthen its own product development capabilities. Concurrent engineering is a very important choice. The research and application of CE in China is divided into the following stages:

1. Before 1992 was the pre-research phase of concurrent engineering. The 863 / CIMS annual plan and the National Natural Science Foundation of China funded some research topics related to parallel engineering technologies, such as intelligent DFM for product design, research on parallel design methods, and product development processes. Research on modeling and simulation technology.

· 1993, 863 / CIMS theme organization

The philosophical thinking embodied in the theory of concurrent engineering is widely used. Here, this thinking is mainly applied to the following aspects of real estate business management:

The automobile industry is a mature technology and capital-intensive mature industry, and it is the carrier of many high-tech today. Product development is the core of the automobile industry technology, and it is also an important technology. Craft equipment

Automotive development is a complex systems engineering. Its development process includes creative, modeling, design, engineering analysis, prototype car experiments, tooling design and processing, debugging, production, assembly and other tasks. If the various links cannot be well coordinated, automobile development is bound to be a time-consuming and laborious project. Especially in recent years, the domestic automobile industry has developed rapidly, and competition among automobile factories has been unprecedentedly fierce. The cycle, quality and cost of automobile development have become particularly important. Due to insufficient investment in product research and development, and insufficient practice in the whole process of new product development, there is still a large gap between China and foreign high-level automotive development technologies. Especially in the product development organization system and personnel, product development work organization, product development process and other links. The following will discuss how to use parallel engineering in the automotive development process to shorten the product development cycle, improve product quality, and reduce product development costs.

Generally speaking, there are 4 stages in the automotive product development period, namely the planning stage, the design stage, the sample trial production stage, and the small batch trial production stage. Car companies implementing product development concurrent engineering should be applied in these four stages.

Concurrent Engineering Planning Phase

At the planning stage, the decision-making layer of an automobile enterprise should first consider: whether the developed product can bring economic benefits to the enterprise; whether the developed product has the advantages of advancedness, feasibility, economy, and environmental protection; whether the developed product has a potential market Whether the competitors are also developing the same type of products and their level; whether the development of products meets domestic and foreign laws and regulations and patent requirements.

If it is considered feasible through the demonstration, immediately set up a product development concurrent engineering project team. Enterprises should select product design, product technology, quality management, on-site construction, production management and other personnel with certain technical expertise and management capabilities from the departments related to product development (if necessary, customer representatives for product use can be invited to participate) Concurrent engineering project team, and clarify the job responsibilities of team members.

Concurrent engineering design phase

Concurrent engineering requires product developers to consider all factors in the product life cycle when formulating the overall design of the product, and to solve the T, Q, C, and S problems of the product, that is, the fastest time to market, the best quality, The lowest cost and best service to meet the different needs of customers and the needs of sustainable development of society. The design and demonstration of the overall plan is used as the basis for detailed design in the future. It must be optimal as a whole, including optimizing the design, reducing costs, and shortening the development cycle.

During the design phase, the product development concurrent engineering project team shall determine the design goals of the developed product according to user requirements. To ensure that the developed product can satisfy the users, it is necessary to take the project development cycle, project development cost and predetermined optimal effect that the user cares about as the design goals of the developed product.

The design goals are the action plan of the concurrent engineering project team. These goals are the basis for fully studying the domestic and international economic situation, reasonable customer requirements, overall market demand, national laws and regulations, and internal objective conditions of the enterprise, and comprehensively collecting relevant information about competitors OK. After the design goals are determined, a reasonable and simple method should be adopted to find the key goals according to user requirements and decompose the design goals into several classification goals. In this way, the parallel engineering project team can expand the design goals layer by layer, and the departments of the enterprise work in parallel. And according to the requirements of key objectives, the product development process is evaluated to obtain the optimal design results.

Concurrent engineering sample trial production stage

The focus of concurrent engineering in the sample trial stage is to optimize all aspects of the product. The concurrent engineering project team should establish a design model for a typical product. The purpose of automobile enterprises to carry out typical product design, reliability design and reliability test is to establish a design database of typical products and to use modern computer application technology to realize the design data collection, compilation, distribution, evaluation and extended management. Establish a typical product design model. And by studying the established typical product design model, using the information feedback system to estimate the product life, find out the common requirements of its product design and product improvement, and realize the optimal design of the product. To optimize the design of developed automotive products, you must also understand the failure laws and types of similar products, especially when designing products that have a significant impact on safety, reliability, and durability. Carefully analyze the failures of similar products in the database. The role of laws and failure types is to use the accumulated data of mature products, to increase the safety factor, reduce the load, and strengthen the test to optimize the product design.

Concurrent engineering small batch trial production stage

The focus of parallel engineering in the small batch trial production stage is to optimize the production capacity. The production capacity should be reasonably configured in accordance with product quality requirements. The optimized combination of the "personnel, equipment, materials, funds, information, etc." of the production process is the basis for achieving the maximum output with the least input, especially when the speed of product and technology updates is constantly accelerating and the degree of social production is large. Increasingly today, in order to achieve rapid product launch to the market, it is even more necessary to optimize the analysis of technological processes, process costs, equipment capabilities, process equipment effectiveness, testing capabilities, and test capabilities to achieve a reasonable allocation of production capabilities. At the same time, for the produced products, from the user's standpoint, a certain amount should be selected from the processed and qualified products to evaluate whether the quality characteristics meet the requirements of product drawings, technical standards, laws and regulations; and quality defects Based on how much, evaluate the corresponding quality level of the product, and urge the relevant departments to immediately formulate improvement measures, and analyze the information returned by the user on the trial product, and also give reasonable and feasible suggestions made by the user. Improvement measures to achieve customer satisfaction. In addition, due to the special safety requirements of this product, companies must also perform safety and reliability tests on cars.

The purpose of the safety and reliability test of automobile products is mainly to check whether the products meet the specified safety requirements. Product design improvement and product quality improvement are a regular work throughout the product life cycle. Continuous improvement is the basis for continuously improving the management level of the enterprise, and it is the eternal driving force for customer satisfaction and enterprise profit.