It is not surprising that companies face challenges in determiningthe sort of concurrent engineering solution that they require given themultiplicity of ways that it has been considered. Concurrent engineeringhas been viewed at a tactical level in terms of a series of disparatetools, techniques and organisational structures that when implementedtogether form concurrent engineering. Typical elements judged to createa concurrent engineering solutions have included parallel tasks, crossfunctional development teams, inter-disciplinary workgroups, use ofquality engineering methods such as QFD, Taguchi, SPC, an integrated CAEenvironment and design-for-manufacture techniques. A second body of workregards concurrent engineering at a strategic level. It emphasises theparallel consideration of all aspects of product introduction ratherthan the more traditional sequential approach. The final group ofdefinitions views concurrent engineering at an objective level. Thedefinition of concurrent engineering becomes very wide to encompass away for improving the performance of product introduction and henceimproving overall business performance. Each of these approaches canfind echoes in industrial implementations. For the purpose of this paperconcurrent engineering is considered in terms of its effect on theorganisational structure. This article therefore focuses on the types ofteam implemented in terms of its membership, leadership, location andwhether or not the team is full-time
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