What is concurrent engineering? .... Concurrent engineering is all about introducing parallelism in to design process, manufacturing, quality and product development that emphasizes the response to customer expectations. By working in parallelism, product development can be accomplished more efficiently and at a substantial cost savings. How does this works, when a sequences are run parallel they introduce some concurrency in the system, for example, during the design process, evaluation of the design schematics and passing over to layout manufacturing process after evaluation, all three processes are done in exchange of information .That is, whenever a change occurs during this process it is sent back in to the system for review and redesigning. By this example I can say that parallelism is introduced in to the system that decreases production time and most importantly improves quality of the product.
Concurrent engineering can be applied to any industry, and by organizations of various sizes. Polaroid, Boeing, NASA, and the European Space Agency are among the most well-known entities that have successfully implemented concurrent engineering programs. In one notable example, General Electric employees were able to reduce the design time associated with several aircraft engine components by approximately 19 weeks through the use of concurrent engineering.
As along, Accelerating innovative products and increasing the number of new product introductions is a huge challenge for most organizations. Here comes product life cycle management .so, what is product life cycle management? Product Life cycle Management is a process used to manage the data and design process associated with the life of a product from its conception and envisioning through its manufacture, to its retirement and disposal. PLM manages data, people, business processes, manufacturing processes, and anything else pertaining to a product. A PLM system acts as a central information hub for everyone associated with a given product, so a well-managed PLM system can streamline product development and facilitate easier communication among those working on/with a product.
The various functions that go into the Product life cycle management are as follows. Core PLM for both discrete and process industries, Engineering Change Management, Data Vaulting, BOM Management, Product Cost Estimation, Product Development and Portfolio Management, Manufacturing Process Management (MPM), Ideation & Requirements Management, Service Data Management, Regulatory and Compliance and Application Technology Concurrent engineering focuses on the improvement of overall processes of the system, both product and process design run in parallel and occur in the