Abstract
In a global competitive and capital intensive high-technology industrial product market, it is essential for market players to continuously develop and supply quality and cost economical products, while reducing product supply lead times. These factors are necessary to ensure that a product manufacturer remains competitive and sustainable.
Concurrent engineering (CE) and new product development (NPD) theories provide the basis upon which the current work practice at De Technologies (the organization), is evaluated and can be improved. Current barriers and challenges to good CE practice in the organization, are identified, and their impacts analysed.
A multi-method qualitative approach to research data collection using an online questionnaire as a primary data source, followed by targeted semi-structured interviews for data triangulation is applied. Then quantitative and qualitative data analysis approaches are applied to arrive at research findings.
A causal relationship analysis of the findings is performed, and strategy communications is identified as a key barrier. A lack of strategy communications is a cause for various current CE challenges including poor project portfolio management; a lack of documented setting specific design standards; no consideration for cost effective designs and for designing products for ease of manufacture and assembly; poor production process planning; lack of agility in procurement processes; use of disparate technological systems; lack of co-design collaborations; and poor interfaces between design and manufacturing. A documented new product handover criterion between design and manufacturing, describing all elements against which a new product can be declared as production ready, is identified as key to achieving an optimized interface between design and manufacturing.
A CE framework that maps a path to good CE practice, is then developed, proposed and validated.
Keywords: barriers, concurrent engineering, CE framework, enablers, new product development, production, product cost, product design, product manufacturing, product quality, time to market.