Product and process design effort allocation in concurrent engineering

Concurrent engineering has become a popular approach to product development among manufacturing companies. A lively debate has recently arisen upon wh ether the technique may be conveniently applied under all circumstances, or whether, in some cases, it may be inferior to other approaches, including the traditional sequential one. The paper proposes an analytical model of c oncurrent engineering and shows that the main, although not the only, deter minants in suggesting the optimal allocation of product and process design effort are the `evolution speeds' of product and process parameters. Evolut ion speed indicates whether the major part of design uncertainty is reduced early or late in the design process and, among other factors, is related t o the problem's innovative content. It is eventually found that concurrent engineering is optimal in the case of routine design and when the process c haracteristics are not critical. Under other circumstances other three patt erns, termed `sequential', `process first' and `co-operative R&D', appear t o be superior.