An attribute management approach to concurrent engineering

A new approach for achieving increased concurrency in the new product development process (PDP) is discussed. It is termed an 'attribute management' approach and is based on the release of information to the next stage of the PDP on an attribute-by-attribute basis, with concurrency taking place within the development of the attribute rather than a part. For this process, an attribute is defined as a specified part or process feature that can be identified as an entity and used independently in the development or manufacture of the part. In order to validate this new approach, it has been tested in industry for the introduction of two major aerospace products, which form the basis of case studies for this paper. The results of this action research have then been compared with metrics considered typical for the introduction of these new products using a conventional concurrent engineering (CE) approach. The use of the attribute management approach, for the two cases presented, has been shown to provide significant improvements in development lead-time, development time input, recurring product cost and post-PDP design changes.