Concurrent Engineering Course Materials

Course Description
In traditional engineering a relatively short time is spent defining the product. A relatively long time is spent designing the product and a surprisingly long time is often spent redesigning the product. The key to shortening the overall design time is to better define the product and better document the design process. Traditionally, the development of a product had been seen as a cycle of plan...do...check...act...(adjust). Concurrent engineering is a process in which appropriate disciplines are committed to work interactively to conceive, approve, develop, and implement product programs that meet pre-determined objectives. Concurrent Engineering is the relatively recent term applied to the engineering design philosophy of cross-functional cooperation in order to create products which are better, cheaper, and more quickly brought to market. This new trend reunites technical and non technical disciplines such as engineering, marketing and accounting. Always focusing on satisfying the customer, these organizations must work together in defining the product.

The materials distributed here are the first two chapters (of six) of the course. The complete course materials will be published as a text book in the near future.

Table of Contents

Readme.doc

Chapter 1 - Overview of Concurrent Engineering

Chapter 2 - Cross-Functional Teamwork
Team Dynamics Module
Recent publications about this course:
Course Authors:
Jose Zayas-Castro - University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (jzayas@exodo.upr.clu.edu)
Russell Barton - Penn State (barton@simplex.psu.edu)
Craig Nowack - Penn State
Robert Smith - University of Washington (robsmith@u.washington.edu)

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4 March 1998