Concurrent and collaborative engineering implementation in an R&D organisation

The new economy is driving federal research laboratories to implement new ways for the management of their Research & Development (R&D) activities. This situation is very similar to that documented by many other organizations involved in R&D activities, where researchers are being asked to be relevant, to be more application-oriented, and to consider themselves key partners in the strategic management of the business. In addition, R&D is being asked to meet the same challenges as the rest of the organization, namely: 1) to reduce time to market; 2) reduce cost; 3) improve quality; 4) increase reliability; and 5) increase focus on customer needs. Concurrent Engineering (CE), and Collaborative Engineering (or Collaborative Product Development-CPD) have emerged as new paradigms with significant impact in the development of new products and processes. With documented and substantiated success in the automotive and technology industries CE and, most recently, CPD are being touted as innovative management philosophies for many other business sectors including Research and Development. This paper introduces two independent research initiatives conducted at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland, Ohio investigating the application of CE and CPD in an R&D environment. Since little research has been conducted in the use of CE and CPD in sectors other than the high mass production manufacturing, the objective of these independent studies is to provide a systematic evaluation of the applicability of these paradigms (concurrent and collaborative) in a low/no production, service environment, in particular R&D.