Concurrent product, process, and manufacturing system design: The imperative strategy for the 21st century manufacturing

While the concurrent engineering concept may have successfully promoted the concurrent development of product and manufacturing process, the real manufacturing capability and capacity of a company is likely to be ignored. This often results in poor assessment of true "manufacturability" and "desirability" of products. Effective integration and concurrency of manufacturing and design activities will be the key to success and survival in the 21(st) century. This paper presents an interesting yet very important argument of the need to expand the typical concurrent engineering domain to incorporate the production system design as one of the key concurrent tasks. Critical issues related to concurrent product, process and manufacturing system design are reviewed. The concepts of automation, integration, concurrency, and agility are discussed and the tools to narrow the gap among the product, process and manufacturing system design activities are elaborated. The importance of flexible, adaptive and responsive information systems, virtual manufacturing software tools and computing platforms, and the need for a seamless integration in concurrent design activities are discussed. Some supporting and enabling manufacturing system technologies and related research areas are highlighted.