Concurrent engineering supplier involvement

The supply of equipment has traditionally been the last element of a project, which can result in more expensive facilities which are sometimes sub-optimised for production, usually because of inadequate delivery time imposed by previous project slippages. To overcome these problems, concurrent engineering (CE) has become commonplace in the automotive industry, where either major product or face lift programmes are being increased in frequency. Given that production facilities can take between three and 18 months to supply, it has become important to involve suppliers of such equipment as early as possible in the planning cycle. General industry is now using CE, having seen the benefits of lead time reduction and cost savings achieved in the automotive sector because: novel solutions can be fully evaluated through development projects, reducing technical risk and achieving optimum performance; balance of cost vs. performance can be more fully established, i.e. the trade-off between labour effectiveness, automation and risk; eliminating the competitive tender process reduces lead times; and better design through more information being available earlier in the project. An additional benefit for the customer is an element of technology transfer which will mean that customer knowledge gained will significantly enhance future production development processes