THE PRINCIPLE OF PARALLEL ENGINEERING

Parallel Engineering was established by Simon Ratcliff in 2014. Although he

has been riding, maintaining and improving his own Norton Commando for over
30 years, his passion for motorcycles began on a repair and maintenance course in
his late teens. Along the way he has gained invaluable knowledge and experience
as an automotive mechanic and through employment as a motorcycle courier in
London. His qualifications, as a mature student from Coventry University, include
an HND in automotive engineering and a degree in mechanical engineering.
Concurrent engineering (CE) or Parallel Engineering is a work methodology
emphasizing the parallelization of tasks (i.e. performing tasks concurrently), which
is sometimes called simultaneous engineering or integrated product development
using an integrated product team approach. It refers to an approach used in product
development in which functions of design engineering, manufacturing engineering,
and other functions are integrated to reduce the time required to bring a new
product to market.
Basic elements of PE:

Parallel
Engineering
Incremental information
Cross-functional teams

Concurrent product

Cross-functioning
Integrated project
management
realization

sharing

Fig. 1 Basic elements of PE

In other words, Concurrent Engineering is based on cross- functional and multi-
disciplinary teams representing various functional areas. Hence in this approach,
marketing, design, manufacturing engineering and all stakeholders in the product
development processes are brought together to discuss issues related to integration
of functional design, manufacturing, quality control, customer service and so on.
This multifunctional team is responsible for addressing various issues such as:
 The marketing services of the company feel that the tolerance range of 1 ±
0.003 cm is too tight.
 The quality department finds the number of rejections is too high.
 The manufacturing and planning department wishes to use machine tools
with better process capabilities.
 The purchasing department cannot buy more raw shafts because of the
restricted availability of material.
A conventional engineering process to develop a product can be schematized as in
figure 1 whereas the principles of concurrent engineering can be represented as
shown in figure 2.

Fig. 2 Difference between CE (conventional) and PE

Research activities related to application of concurrent engineering principles
in manufacturing environments and which information is available in published
literature confirm that they ensure enhanced variety and technical complexity of
product at compressed product never ending demands of consumers.
It has been found from earlier works that Concurrent Engineering aids in:
 Development and Production Lead Times
 Measurable Quality
 Improvements Engineering Process Improvements
 Cost Reduction
 Nowadays, Concurrent Engineering (CE) is becoming more important as
companies compete in the worldwide market. Reduced time in product
development process, higher product quality, lower cost in manufacturing process
and fulfillment of customers’ requirements are the key factors to determine the
success of a company. To produce excellent products, the concept of Concurrent
Engineering must be implemented.
However, employing CE has not always been proven easy. As the popularity
of CE grows and its applications have become more diverse, the core principles
which define CE have become more and more vague. The CE approach is
sometimes viewed as expensive in the short term, requiring resources and levels of
commitment which may not be available.