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A Gunasekaran
To cite this article: A Gunasekaran (1998) Concurrent engineering: a competitive strategy for
process industries, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 49:7, 758-765, DOI: 10.1057/
palgrave.jors.2600549
Article views: 54
manufacturing, the plant design and installation become analysis, maintenance and reliability are considered sepa-
part of the total design process in PI. Mostly, CE has been rately from the design process, (f) design data is fragmented
used to develop new products and production control and it is dif®cult to maintain consistency always across
systems. Nevertheless, the application of CE should also various representations, (g) information is lost as the design
be extended to the design and installation of process plant. progresses. The design intent may be lost by the time the
This indicates that CE should be applied for both upstream documentation gets to the producibility experts, and (h)
issues (such as competitors, economic conditions, market designers are usually not aware of cost reduction as a
potential and customer requirements) and downstream realistic goal, due to the lack of cost estimation tools.
activities (such as design, engineering production and These dif®culties can be overcome by the new method of
distribution), and has potential in PI. Realising the compe- design based on concurrent engineering.
titiveness of PI, the application of CE in PI has been A model to illustrate the principle of CE is presented in
investigated in this paper. This paper ®rst analyses the Figure 1. CE is a systematic approach to an integrated,
characteristics of PI and next brings to the fore the aspects concurrent design of products, process and installation of
of how the productivity and quality can be improved by plant, and processing of products, considering the related
implementing CE. downstream aspects and the elimination of non-value
adding activities. This can be achieved through a multi-
disciplinary team approach which intends to motivate
Concurrent Engineering (CE)
process designers, plant designers and installations and
In PI, productivity improvements, therefore tend largely to participants throughout various design processes, to
come from process improvements. In the recent years, consider all elements of the products life cycle from the
application of computers in PI has increased over time to inception through to the disposal of product, taking into
integrate various functional areas such as marketing, design account quality, cost, time, function, the client and end user
and engineering, production and distribution by improving requirements.6,7 From the conceptual model, it can be seen
the information ¯ow and hence the material ¯ow. Also, the that the activities have been carried in sequence such as
multimedia application in PI leads to interactive training production, design and engineering, accounting, perfor-
that aims to eliminate any non-value adding activities such mance measures, personnel and distribution will now be
as rework and maintenance. Product life cycles are getting performed in parallel in the case of CE.
shorter, and the close coupling of business and technology
strategy has become critical. Cleetus4 states, `CE is a
systematic approach to integrated and concurrent develop- Characteristics of process industries and the application
ment of a product and its related processes, that emphasises of CE
response to customer expectations and embodies team
values of co-operation, trust and sharing in such a manner Process industries obtain their raw materials from mining
that decision making proceeds with large intervals of paral- or agricultural industries. These raw materials have natural
lel working by all life-cycle perspectives early in the
process, synchronised by comparatively brief exchanges to
produce consensus'. In the past, computers have been used
mostly in different functional areas in an isolated manner
without taking into account the total system integration.
However, CE can be used as a strategy for system integra-
tion with the objective to improve ¯exibility and respon-
siveness by developing a high variety and low volume PI.
This will certainly change the tradiational characteristics of
PI to a more customer-focused industry in terms of offering
quality goods and competitive prices.
Some of the dif®culties associated with the traditional
sequential method of operations have been highlighted by
Bedworth et al5 as follows: (a) design alternatives are
quickly eliminated in the interest of time and one particular
narrow idea is pursued, (b) the de®nition of design detail is
costly in labour hours, and involves much manual effort, (c)
the design process is characterised by a rigid sequence of
design decisions, (d) producibility and supportability issues
are not considered until relatively late in the process, when a
design may be very costly, (e) production planning, support Figure 1 A model to illustrate concurrent engineering.
760 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 49, No. 7
traditional way of performing operations using single- (i) PI includes continuous production, little variety, low
purpose equipment should be changed. The application of product complexity and the same routing for all
CE to PI might change the above traditional characteristics products. However, the current market situation is
of the process industries including the high set-up cost and different and warrants customised products and in
low variety products. By applying CE to plant design and turn a ¯exible production system.
installation, non-value added activities both in the upstream (ii) Traditionally, PI includes special-purpose equipments.
and downstream activities of the plant can be eliminated at However, customised products require a ¯exible
the early stage of the design process of process/product, production system. This needs the co-operation
plant and operations. This will help to improve the ¯exibility between equipment suppliers, plant design and instal-
(variety and volume) of the production system in PI. For lation contractor, and plant operators.
example, while designing the plant with equipment suppli- (iii) Since the set-up cost is high in PI, there is a need for
ers, the set-up cost can be reduced drastically with the help reducing it to minimise the switch over costs. Again,
of suitable change-over equipments (for example robots), this emphasises the co-operation between equipment
automated cleaning technology, modi®ed tooling, etc., manufacturers, plant design and installation contractor
Moreover, designing a plant based on CE principles and and operators of the plant with the objective to mini-
considering the involvement of equipment and raw material mise the set-up costs, say for example with the help of
suppliers at the early stage of the plant design can reduce the robots and automation in set-up operations, and hence
set-up cost and increase the overall ¯exibility of PI. to increase the ¯exibility of the production system for
Table 1 presents the differences in the characteristics of customised products.
discrete manufacturing and process industries. For exam- (iv) Rapid prototyping in the design and installation of
ple, raw material selection is important in PI as this process plants. Multimedia, Quality Function Deploy-
in¯uences the processes required to produce ®nal product ment (QFD) and simulation can be used as tools of CE
and hence determines the equipment design, design of the to reduce production lead-times.
plant and operations. Therefore, the raw material selection (v) Multi-purpose equipment with possibilities to extend
should be given due consideration while taking into the product mix can be used. This would increase the
account the process, quality and other operational aspects. ¯exibility of the production system.
Similarly, the safety and environmental aspects of PI are (vi) There is a need for integration of information
highly important as the type of materials used are hazar- exchange between equipment suppliers, plant designer
dous such as poisonous chemicals/gases. Therefore, these and installer and company operator using CE.
aspects should be given due consideration in the design and (vii) PI is labour intensive and therefore, there is a need for
installation of plant and hence the operations. Retailers and employee co-operation by open communication,
buyers of the products are working together during the education, training and empowerment. More automa-
product design phase, so that demands on the products and tion in the operations of the plant will require knowl-
hence the operations are speci®ed at the earliest possible edge workers and support services to operate the
resulting in shorter innovative times and lower costs. system effectively.
The following conclusions are evident after studying the
characteristics of PI and the potential for the application of Plant wide controllability analysis in the conceptual
CE in PI: design stage is an issue that has been raised by PI. In this
Raw materials Optional consideration at the design Early consideration at the design stage
stage
Process design Slight impact on the plant design and Highly influence the design and
installation installation of the plant
Shorter production cycle Longer production cycle
Small batch production Large batch production
Production Assembly Mixing/blending
High variety and low volume High volume and low variety
Discrete material flow Continuous material flow
Process/production equipment designer General purpose machines Special purpose equipments
Safety and environmental aspects Slightly relevant at the design stage Highly relevant at the design stage
Design and installation of plant Less important Highly important
762 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 49, No. 7
of the computer design concepts. CE can be used as a suppliers and the operating companies throughout this
package of an integrated software system designed for the evolution. The concept of CE has been embedded in their
automation of engineering, layout, construction, and opera- framework. In PI, the equipment manufacturers play a signi-
tion of industrial facilities.12 The productivity of PI can be ®cant role in re®ning existing technology and improving
enhanced by such uni®ed management strategies as plant equipment reliability and its capabilities. Such efforts are
management system (PMS), manufacturing resource plan- supported by the close co-operation with the operating com-
ning (MRP II), and Just-In-Time (JIT). PMS has the root panies, which can contribute process knowledge that the
closet to chemical process industries.10 Also, CIP and PMS equipment manufacturers might otherwise lack. The PI
meld process and business data that can be implemented on should focus on the value-added activities and eliminate all
many of the process controllers available today. MRP II is an non-value added activities through BPR that support the cus-
information system that allows a plant to deal with massive tomised products by recon®guring the products for different
quantitative data. This implies the application and potential purposes and reproduce a single product in various facilities.
for CE in PI with a broad scope such as improving the Since the traditional production system is not ¯exible in
¯exibility and overall performance of PI by eliminating any PI, there is a need to improve the ¯exibility of the system
congestion in the organisation. The details of the application by shorter production cycle and small batch production.
of CE in PI are presented in Table 2. These warrant the application of MRP, JIT and CIM. The
Successful companies in PI recognise the importance of product life cycles are collapsing and demands for custo-
involving customers and suppliers in the design and devel- mised products are growing. These require a ¯exible
opment of products and services. When a sophisticated production system in PI with help of ¯exible equipments,
product and process technologies are involved with produc- plants and operational policies to facilitate the ¯exible
tion, these relationships create a network of companies and processing capabilities. In order to reduce inventory
industries, each of which is a potential source for techno- levels and hence to improve the material ¯ow and ¯ex-
logical innovation.13,14 These authors have presented a ibility in PI, some of the production characteristics of PI
framework for understanding the evaluation of technological should be brought to those of discrete manufacturing. For
innovation in ethylene manufacturing including the chan- example, one can use robots for cleaning/set-up operations
ging role of the equipment suppliers, the process plant ion PI to reduce the set-up cost. This would help to reduce
Raw materials Early consideration at the design stage Supplier involvement, customer
requirements, collaborative tasks between
plant contractors and raw material suppliers
Process design Highly influence the design and installation Design function deployment, collaborative
of the plant decision making, team-building, life cycle
design, computer simulation
Longer production cycle Business process reengineering, JIT,
Large batch production involvement of suppliers, automation such
Production Mixing/blending as robots, supply chain management, use of
High volume and low variety computer tools for planning and
Continuous material flow programming, development of
infrastructure for the implementation of
computer-integrated production, group
technology in the design of production
cells, MRP, ZI, employee empowerment,
cross-functional team and total quality
management
Process/production equipment designer Special purpose equipments CAD/CAM/CIP, supplier involvement,
multidisclipinary team, quality function
deployment, feature-based design and
production
Safety and environmental aspects Highly relevant at the design stage Design and process control for
environment friendly, assess safety
measures and risks
Design and installation of plant Highly important Open communication, proactive
management, multidisclipinary team,
plant-contractor and supplier involvement
in the process/product design
A GunasekaranÐConcurrent engineering 765
the production batch size and cycle time in PI and hence an aspect of the CE application in process/product design.
improved ¯exibility of the plant to produce customised Therefore, there is a need to consider the process control
products. Owing to the nature of the ¯exible production system while designing the equipment and plant design,
system, the scheduling policies can also be ¯exible which and installation. The number of intermediate storage in PI
would further support the higher degree of freedom about can be reduced by the ¯exible production system. The main
products and hence product ¯exibility for satisfying the objective of this paper has been to motivate and instigate
customer's requirements. the researchers and practitioners to apply new manufactur-
In order to improve ¯exibility in planning/scheduling, ing concepts and technologies in process industries that has
new process and production control systems using the generally been ignored in the past for improving the overall
application of CE are to be considered. These aspects are performance of the industry.
signi®cant at the design stage of the process/product,
equipment and plant, together with various operational AcknowledgementsÐThe author is most grateful to Professors Khairy
policies. It may not be possible to solve all the problems Kobbacy and Sunil Vadera, Guest Editors of this special issue and Dr.
at the design stage, equal efforts should be made to develop Jan Fransoo (Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands) and two
¯exibility within the production system with the help of anonymous referees for their extremely constructive and helpful comments
on the earlier version of the manuscript which helped to improve the
suitable infrastructure, organisational structure, team work presentation of the paper considerably.
and empowerment, independent of the product design
features. For instance, the application of cellular production
system using Group Technology, use of robots in the set-up References
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ing. Furthermore, development of a knowledge-based Received January 1997;
system for process control in PI becomes an important accepted January 1998 after one revision