1995 is a new development stage. From theory to practice, remarkable achievements have been made. Concurrent engineering has developed from theory to practice. More and more internationally renowned enterprises set foot in aviation, aerospace, automobile, electronics, machinery and other fields, and achieved remarkable benefits through the implementation of concurrent engineering.
For example, in June 1992+00, Lockheed Missile and Space Company (LMSC) of the United States accepted the development of a new type of missile used by the US Department of Defense (DOD) for "Theater High Altitude Area Defense" (Thaad). The company's missile development usually takes five years, and the product development cycle is shortened by 60% by using the method of concurrent engineering. The concrete implementation is as follows:
Improve the product development process. In the early stage of the project, LMSC spent a lot of energy to analyze the various processes in Thaad development, and optimize these processes and develop the process support system. Adopt integrated parallel design method.
Realize information integration and sharing. In the design and experiment stage, some design, engineering changes, experiments and other data, all relevant data must be entered into the database. The application system must realize effective information integration and sharing. Using product data management system to assist concurrent design. LMSC adopts mature engineering data management system to assist concurrent product development. By supporting the seven basic processes of design and engineering information and its use (data collection, storage, query, distribution, inspection and marking, workflow management and product configuration management), its engineering data can be effectively managed.
Benefits brought by CE: The missile development cycle has been shortened from the past five years to 24 months, and the product development cycle has been shortened by 60%. It greatly shortens the time of design review and inspection (generally only 3 hours) and improves the quality of inspection and design.
In addition, heavy radar equipment like Siemens also uses concurrent engineering to improve product quality and shorten development cycle. Its implementation has six requirements:
Establish a "one-time development success" team and technical center;
Develop a new design process control tool to track the time delay in the cycle and eliminate the invalid waiting time;
The IDEF modeling system is introduced to make engineers question and improve in the modeling process.
Process control tools. Its software includes obtaining the historical data of each design document passing through the design center and recording the root cause of DCI;
Using 1 online system, the project manager responsible for canceling DCI is required to write down the detailed reasons;
The product design team and product testing team will be merged into a digital team, which will be responsible for development and testing in the future, and testing considerations will become a part of the design process.
ABB (Switzerland) train transportation system has established a computer system supporting CE, an interoperable network system and a consistent product data model, organized a design and manufacturing process team, and applied simulation technology. The application of concurrent engineering greatly shortens the product development cycle. In the past, it took 3~4 years from contract signing to delivery, only 3~ 18 months. For customers in Southeast Asia, delivery can be made within 12 months. The whole product development cycle is shortened by 25%~33%, in which it takes 6 months from user demand to test platform, which is shortened by 50%.
In addition, famous enterprises such as Renault (Renauld) and General Electric (GE) have also achieved remarkable benefits by implementing concurrent engineering. If China's manufacturing industry wants to participate in the world competition, it must improve its product development capability, and concurrent engineering is a very important choice. The research and application of concurrent engineering in China can be divided into the following stages:
1. 1992 is the pre-research stage of concurrent engineering. The 863/CIMS annual plan and the National Natural Science Foundation funded some research topics related to concurrent engineering, such as intelligent DFM for product design, research on concurrent design method, modeling and simulation technology of product development process, etc.
1993,863/CIMS organized Tsinghua University, Beihang University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, South China University of Technology and No.204 Institute of Aerospace Engineering to form a ce feasibility demonstration group, and proposed to carry out CE research based on CIMS experimental project.
1May 1995, the 863/CIMS key technology research project "Concurrent Engineering" was formally established, and a large amount of money was invested to carry out the research on concurrent engineering methods, key technologies and application realization.
1May, 1995-1February, 1997, the key research of "Concurrent Engineering" project was carried out.
2. Since 1998, "concurrent engineering" has been studied and deeply discussed, and it has been applied to aerospace and other fields.
The research on concurrent engineering in China has also developed to a certain height. The following are several typical examples of the successful application of concurrent engineering.
Xi 'an Aircraft Industry (Group) Co., Ltd. develops system tools to support concurrent engineering of aircraft interior, including CAID system, DEA system and aircraft interior CAD/CAE/CAM system. Such as Y7-200A interior decoration design and manufacturing concurrent engineering. Through process modeling and PDM implementation, industrial design, DFA, mold CAD/CAM in concurrent engineering environment, digital definition of aircraft cabin interior and other technical means. In Y7-700A aircraft interior decoration project, the development cycle was shortened from 1.5 years to 1 year, the design change was reduced by more than 60%, and the product development cost was reduced by more than 20%.
Third, taking Boeing 737-700 vertical tail subcontract production as an example, the development cycle is shortened by 3 months; Save $3.7 million in tooling introduction cost; Reduce samples 1 165 pieces, totaling 500,000 yuan; 23 items of standard tools and second-class tooling were reduced, totaling 654.38 yuan +0.25 million yuan; Reduce 136 transition module, totaling 680,000 yuan; The speed of NC programming is increased by 4~6 times, and the trial cutting time of NC parts is reduced by 40%; The process design efficiency is improved by 1.5 times.
Improvement of development process of boxcar in Qiqihar rail vehicle concurrent engineering. The improvement measures include: in the initial stage of product development, the manufacturability of stamping parts, steel castings and other parts and the product performance of railway freight cars can be fully considered to minimize design errors and improve design quality; At the same time, DFX is added, so that the processing, assembly and technical problems of products can be considered in the product design stage, and the possibility of successful design is improved. Realize the parallel development of process and tooling, and simplify the design process; Manufacturing system and product development process do not constitute a big cycle, thus shortening product development cycle and improving product quality and level. The philosophy embodied in concurrent engineering theory is widely used. Here, this idea is mainly applied to the following aspects of real estate enterprise management:
I. Production management
According to the idea of concurrent engineering, real estate development considers all the factors that affect the whole process from the beginning, so that all stages of each process can work in harmony and in parallel. The internal and external, tangible and intangible factors in the development process are considered to enhance the blending degree of management objects and form a complementary and matching overall structure.
The real estate development of concurrent engineering essentially reflects the systematicness of development work-the previous planning, design, construction, sales and management processes are no longer independent units, but are considered in a complete system. In the pre-planning work, product design, investment estimation, development plan, building construction, quality control, sales realization and other factors are brought into the system. At the same time of planning, design and construction preparation can be carried out, which is helpful to find problems in advance and adjust them in time.
The life cycle of real estate development projects is generally divided into five stages: investment decision-making and pre-project planning; The design and planning stage of the project; Construction stage; The sales stage of the project; Use stage. There are some non-serial work between each stage, such as: the market research work in the investment decision-making stage and the product conceptual design in the design stage can be parallel; Construction drawing design and procurement preparation can be done in parallel.
1. Parallel application of investment decision-making and project pre-planning stage
In the stage of investment decision-making and project pre-planning, we should combine management, planning, design, construction, sales, customers, property owners and industry experts, and comprehensively consider the purpose, process and results of the planned project through meetings, questionnaires and other forms.
In the aspect of customer demand, QFD (Quality Function Deployment) method is used to analyze customer demand. Broadly speaking, QFD is a design method that comprehensively reflects users' requirements for products and services to all stages of product development, design and manufacturing by using matrix diagram. By analyzing the basic elements, events and activities in the process of product development, and describing and transforming the relationship between them, it realizes the management, guidance and control of the product development process, so as to ensure that the customer's needs are met to the greatest extent, thus transforming the customer's needs into a series of detectable and operable events and activities.
2. Parallel application of project design and planning stage.
According to the customer demand analysis, comprehensively guide the project design, use the idea of concurrent engineering, take the feasibility and rationality of the follow-up work as design constraints, and minimize the design changes and construction scheme changes in the later construction process.
The design and planning stage should be guided by the following five actions: ① The project development team as a whole is responsible for the whole design. ② The project development team should compare and optimize the design objectives in stages, and eliminate the functions with no added value. (3) Design and use CAD system network to facilitate information sharing. ④ The design must also consider the operability of the construction, such as the construction method, technology, equipment, construction sequence and cooperation between different contractors. ⑤ The design should enable the construction to start when the design part is completed, instead of waiting until the whole design is completed.
3. Parallel application in construction stage
In the construction stage, real estate enterprises generally hand it over to professional construction enterprises through bidding. In the planning stage, professional construction personnel should participate in the planning and design of the project. In the later construction process, we should also pay attention to the parallel application of the following four aspects: ① reduce the interdependence of the three processes in traditional field work and make as many processes as possible at the same time. ② All workers should be made aware of the whole project and their role in the whole plan. (3) Engineering quality and quality inspection methods and standards shall be published in a conspicuous place on the construction site. (4) Send feedback to the inter-departmental team regularly to improve the design of the rest.
Second, organization and management.
1. Establish a parallel group
The establishment of parallel teams is a multi-functional team established by enterprises to complete specific product development tasks, including representatives from market, design, construction, procurement, sales, maintenance, service, customers, suppliers and cooperative units. Through the Qi Xin cooperation of team members, positive synergy can be generated, and the performance level of the team is far greater than the sum of the performance of individual members. Team members have complementary skills, are committed to the same performance goals, and share responsibilities. Greatly improve the mutual information exchange between people at all stages of product life cycle.
2. Team management methods
(1) planning and control. As far as the content of planning and control is concerned, it generally includes schedule, cost and quality. Specific methods and technologies include: network analysis technology, activity-based cost control, total quality management, etc.
② Leadership and encouragement. From the specific operation point of view, there are basically four leadership styles: instruction, participation, authorization and sales promotion. When choosing a style, it mainly changes with the change of task structure and employee quality. The main incentive methods are: target management, behavior correction, employee participation scheme and floating salary scheme.
③ Communication and coordination. Trust, communication and coordination are particularly important for a closely coordinated team work model. Communication has four functions: control, encouragement, emotional expression and information. In specific operations, coordination can not only solve conflicts and avoid organizational dysfunction, but also stimulate conflicts and improve the efficiency of group work on the premise of ensuring normal organizational functions.
3. The decision-making mode and method of the team
When making decisions, the work team usually adopts the way of group decision. Its main advantages are: more complete information and knowledge, increased diversity of views, improved acceptability of decision-making and increased legitimacy. Its shortcomings: waste of time, conformity pressure, control by a few people, unclear responsibility. Generally speaking, group decision-making is more accurate and of better quality. But in terms of speed and efficiency, group decision-making is not as good as individual decision-making.
4. Coordinated conflict resolution
In the process of implementing concurrent engineering, due to the application of parallel mode in the initial stage to comprehensively consider the influence of all links in the whole life process, concurrent engineering emphasizes the cooperation of multidisciplinary experts. Because experts have different knowledge and backgrounds, their goals are also different, which affect and restrict each other and may conflict at any time. How to coordinate these conflicts is the key problem in implementing concurrent engineering. In a sense, the implementation process of concurrent engineering is the process of conflict generation, development and resolution. Conflict can make designers find and solve problems early and ensure the optimization of design scheme.
Third, auxiliary management.
1. Establish a cultural atmosphere conducive to the implementation of concurrent engineering.
The most important aspect of concurrent engineering is that it represents a different culture, not just a method or technology. In fact, some organizations have recognized this in the definition of concurrent engineering. It is not easy to change culture. The main way is through education and training. From the top management, all members of the organization should be aware of the benefits of concurrent engineering method and the conditions it needs. Every layer and member of the organization must be fully aware of what concurrent engineering is and what is not. Before this step is completed, concurrent engineering can be carried out.
2. Strive for the strong support of business leaders and the understanding of department leaders.
Using concurrent engineering to implement project management will inevitably involve changes in organization, power distribution, various incentive policies and interpersonal relationships. And enterprises are extremely sensitive to the determination of power distribution, responsibility and interest relationship. Therefore, there must be the support of the top management of the enterprise. However, under the current situation of construction enterprises in China, it is difficult for the executives of general enterprises to have a strong influence on their subordinates, and he must get their understanding and support. According to the idea of concurrent engineering, he must give each person in charge the right to control the resources of each department, which will obviously weaken the power of each department head, so he needs to do a lot of ideological work for each department head. The determination, prestige, influence and leadership art of enterprise leaders are the key to win the close cooperation of department leaders.
3. Establish the information model and data platform of concurrent engineering.
With the rapid development of computer and communication technology, concurrent engineering can be better implemented in enterprise management. Generally including the establishment of the following information systems to assist the completion of the project and the smooth management of enterprises.
① Project management system. In concurrent product development, multidisciplinary teams are generally formed by projects, and their management methods are basically based on the idea of project management. The functions of project management software generally include: task decomposition, schedule arrangement and tracking, resource allocation, cost accounting and analysis.
② Workflow management system. Workflow management is the automatic coordination, control and communication between people and computers. In computerized business processes, the execution of all commands is controlled by running software on the Internet. Under workflow management, the workload can be monitored to balance the workload of assigning work to different users.
③ Group decision support system. Because of the difference in time and place, the group decision-making process can occur in four situations: the same time-the same place, the same time-different places, different time-the same place, different time-different places. Accordingly, there are four kinds of tools for group decision support system: decision room (supporting collaborative positioning and simultaneous interaction); Engineering room (supporting remote interaction); Conference call system (supporting simultaneous remote interaction); E-mail system and voice mail system (supporting interaction at different times and places).
(4) Information sharing system. Information sharing is a basic element of parallel team work, and information should be transparent and exchanged in time. Computer-aided project management information system can ensure the punctuality of information transmission and help all participants communicate in time and react quickly.
The application of concurrent engineering in the management of the above three real estate enterprises has actually solved the problems of inaccurate project planning and positioning, unrealistic design concept, long project development time, chaotic project construction process and backward service. Automobile industry is a mature industry with high technology and capital density, and it is the carrier of many high and new technologies today. Product development is the core of automobile industry technology and also an important technology. technical plant
Automobile development is a complex system engineering. Its development process includes creativity, modeling, design, engineering analysis, prototype experiment, tooling design and processing, debugging, production and assembly. If all the links are not well coordinated, automobile development is bound to be a huge and time-consuming project. Especially in recent years, with the rapid development of domestic automobile industry, the competition between automobile factories is unprecedented fierce, and the cycle, quality and cost of automobile development are particularly important. Due to insufficient investment in product research and development and insufficient practice in the whole process of new product development, there is still a big gap between China and foreign countries in high-level automobile development technology. Especially in the organizational system and personnel of product development, the organization of product development work and the process of product development. The following will discuss how to use concurrent engineering to shorten product development cycle, improve product quality and reduce product development cost in the process of automobile development.
Generally speaking, there are four stages in the development cycle of automobile products, namely, planning stage, design stage, prototype trial-production stage and small batch trial-production stage. Automobile enterprises should use it in these four stages when implementing product development concurrent engineering.
1. Application of Concurrent Engineering in Planning Stage
In the planning stage, the decision-makers of automobile enterprises should first consider: whether the developed products can bring economic benefits to enterprises; Whether the developed products are advanced, feasible, economical and environmentally friendly; Whether the developed product has a potential market; Whether competitors are also developing the same type of products, and what is the level; Whether the developed products comply with domestic and foreign laws, regulations and patent requirements is feasible.
If it is feasible through demonstration, a product development concurrent engineering project team will be established immediately. Enterprises should select personnel with certain technical expertise and management ability in product design, product technology, quality management, on-site construction and production management. (If necessary, the customer representative of the product user can be invited to participate). Personnel from relevant departments of product development should be transferred to form a concurrent engineering project team, and the work responsibilities of the team members should be defined.
2. Application of Concurrent Engineering in Design Stage
Concurrent engineering requires product developers to solve the T, Q, C and S problems of products by considering all the factors in the product life cycle when formulating the overall scheme of product design, that is, to meet the different needs of customers and the needs of social sustainable development with the fastest time to market, the best quality, the lowest cost and the best service. As the basis of detailed design in the future, the design and demonstration of the overall scheme must ensure the overall optimization, including optimizing design, reducing cost and shortening development cycle.
In the design stage, the product development concurrent engineering project team should determine the design objectives of the developed products according to the needs of users. In order to ensure that the developed products can satisfy users, we must take the project development cycle, project development cost and the predetermined optimal effect that users pay attention to as the design goals of developing products.
The design goal is the action plan of the concurrent engineering project team. These goals are determined on the basis of fully studying the domestic and international economic situation, reasonable customer requirements, overall market demand, national laws and regulations requirements and internal objective conditions of enterprises, and comprehensively collecting relevant information of competitors. After the design goal is determined, it is necessary to adopt a reasonable and simple method to find out the key goal according to the user's needs, and decompose the design goal into several classification goals. In this way, the concurrent engineering project team can spread the design objectives from top to bottom, and all departments of the enterprise can work in parallel. According to the requirements of key objectives, the product development process is evaluated and the optimal design result is obtained.
3. The application of concurrent engineering in sample trial production.
The focus of concurrent engineering in the sample trial-production stage is to optimize all aspects of the product. The concurrent engineering project team should establish the design model of typical products. The purpose of typical product design, reliability design and reliability test of automobile enterprises is to establish the design database of typical products, realize the information collection, compilation, distribution, evaluation and extended management of design data through the application technology of modern computers, and establish the design model of typical products. Through the study of the established typical product design model, the life of the product is estimated by using the information feedback system, the demand for product design and product improvement is found out, and the optimal design of the product is realized. In order to optimize the design of developed automobile products, it is also necessary to understand the failure laws and types of similar products, especially when designing products that have an important impact on safety, reliability and durability. It is necessary to carefully analyze the failure laws and types of similar products in the database, use the accumulated data of mature products, and optimize the product design by increasing the safety factor, reducing the load and strengthening the test.
4. The application of concurrent engineering in small batch trial production.
The focus of concurrent engineering in small batch trial production stage is to optimize production capacity. Production capacity should be reasonably allocated according to product quality requirements. The optimal combination of "personnel, equipment, materials, funds, information, etc." is the basis for obtaining the maximum output with the least input. Especially in today's society, where the updating speed of products and technologies is accelerating and the degree of socialized large-scale production is improving, it is even more necessary to optimize and analyze the process flow, process cost, equipment capacity, process equipment effectiveness, detection capacity and test capacity, so as to realize the rational allocation of production capacity. At the same time, for the products produced, we should take a certain amount from the qualified products from the standpoint of users and evaluate whether their quality characteristics meet the requirements of product drawings, technical standards, laws and regulations; And according to the number of quality defects, evaluate the corresponding quality level of products, and urge relevant departments to formulate improvement measures immediately, analyze the information feedback of users on products put into trial, and put forward reasonable and feasible suggestions for users to achieve user satisfaction. In addition, due to the particularity of automobile product safety requirements, enterprises must also carry out safety and reliability tests on automobiles.
The purpose of safety and reliability test of automobile products is mainly to check whether the products meet the specified safety requirements. Product design improvement and product quality improvement is a regular work throughout the product life cycle. Continuous improvement is the basic method to improve the management level of enterprises, and it is also the eternal driving force for enterprises to pursue customer satisfaction and profits.