Towards a concurrent engine system design methodology

Today's hyper-competitive automotive marketplace places very stringent quality and productivity demands on the industry's manufacturers and thus dictates an investment in new engineering processes and methods. In this paper, an engine design and development process based on Toyota's process improvement vision is presented. The process requires the development and deployment of a model-based concurrent engine system design methodology. Model based engineering has the potential to enable engineers to investigate design alternatives, system sensitivities, and component integration compatibility prior to building and testing physical prototypes. These benefits could be further magnified by engineering concurrency between the various teams involved in engine system development. Tools and methods needed to implement the vision are discussed.