A comparative review of concurrent engineering readiness assessment tools and models

摘要

While Concurrent Engineering (CE) is gaining increasing acceptance within many industry sectors, some implementation efforts have not obtained their full potential for reducing costs, reducing time, and increasing efficiency, effectiveness and performance for product development efforts. This is due in part to weak planning to support the implementation. One approach that has been used successfully to improve CE implementation planning is to conduct an organisation readiness assessment prior to the introduction of CE. This helps to investigate the extent to which the organisation is ready to adopt Concurrent Engineering. This paper focuses on a comparative review of existing readiness assessment tools and models that have been successfully used in the manufacturing and IT sectors. It argues that Readiness Assessment of the construction supply chain is a necessity for the implementation of CE in construction industry. It assesses and discusses the applicability of existing tools and models to the construction industry, and concludes that there is the need of a new CE readiness assessment model for the construction supply chain.