Concurrent engineering as an integrator for managing product development/delivery process

What does it take to change a company that has been manually creating all of its designs, and using information technology (IT) to manage the data to one where Concurrent Engineering (CE) is a process integrator? Such an integrative CE system needs to know a tremendous amount about parts, processes, and environments of a company before it can start generate any new design. The CE system needs to know the company's IT environment as well as any product specific integration logic. The resident experts must agree on the best way to make a part before any concurrent team starts laying down the integration logic. The paper describes how a CE system helps to integrate the product design, development and delivery (PD³) process based on requirements about the family of parts, features, and attributes. Supporting database information that is made integral to the CE system includes: geometry, form features, design criteria, heuristics, best design practices. Non–geometric information includes: system analysis tools, materials, assembly sequence, and, of course, the enterprise's knowledge base of design decision logic. System analysis tools include: the best of classical analysis, information modelling, and experimentation methods, blended with knowledge–based methodologies and integration logic.