Concurrent Engineering of Product, Process, Facility, and Organization

We argue in this paper that Concurrent Engineering of Product, Process, Facility and Organization (CE4) is now both possible and beneficial. As quality has started to become a commodity, lime to market has become the major issue for many kinds of businesses. In some industries such as semiconductors in which product and process development have become rapid and competitive, developing the factory and bringing it on-line have started to become bottleneck steps in the product development cycle. CE4 extends the tradition of concurrent engineering of product and manufacturing process: it is now possible to start lo design the product, manufacturing process, manufacturing facility and the managing organization simultaneously. Like traditional concurrent design of product and manufacturing process (CE2), CE4 probably depends primarily on setting the management objective and providing the management support However, CE4 can build on a number of technical foundations: symbolic product and process models; support for extensive coordination among design professionals doing product, process, facility and organization design; and analytical tools to allow designers to do what-if studies of their individual and integrated designs. Engineers now routinely use some of these analytical tools, such as simulation models of devices, processes, buildings and facilities. We suggest adding organizational analysis tools, integrating all of these tools, and using them concurrently. We suggest that benefits of CE4 will include significantly improved time to market and potentially improved product cost and quality.