The historical roots of concurrent engineering fundamentals

This paper explores the history of the ideas behind concurrent engineering from the end of the 19th Century until the 1960s. Concurrent engineering is the relatively recent term that is applied to the engineering design philosophy of cross-functional cooperation in order to create products that are better, cheaper, and more quickly brought to market. The principles of concurrent engineering that are traced by this paper are: manufacturing and functional design constraints need to be considered simultaneously; combining of people with different functional backgrounds into a design team is a useful way to combine the different knowledge bases; engineering designers must bear in mind customer preferences during the design process; and time to market is an important determinant of eventual success in the market. None of these principles is by itself surprising; concurrent engineering has led to their propagation to many people and firms in the engineering world. The author has examined the engineering literature in order to locate the existence of similar themes in published engineering thought. All of these themes have recurred often in the literature. Concurrent engineering can be seen therefore as a summary of best practice in product development, rather than the adoption of a radically new set of ideas. The paper suggests some reasons that concurrent engineering ideas may not have been adopted more widely.