Managing information for concurrent engineering: Challenges and barriers

An ongoing research project with a large international manufacturing company has uncovered many critical issues for the development and introduction of systems that supportconcurrent engineering. Several of these issues can be solved through careful interface design, while others require significant technical and organizational changes. To reduce training costs and support a broad spectrum of users, computer system developers must create a single system image, giving the users the impression that they are accessing a single database through a consistent and easy to use interface. This interface, and the tools it contains, may be used to support concurrent engineering activities even when a company is geographically distributed over a large area. The complexity of the firm's products and processes and the need for rapid access to relevant performance information make it essential that developers identify suitable frameworks for organizing database queries.Design hierarchies, representations of the structure and function of the firm's products and processes, have proven to be powerful tools for effective query management, and for efficient navigation through the database. The database interface must also produce integrated displays of data drawn from a number of sources in response to prestructured queries. Beyond these interface design issues, there are a number of technical and organizational barriers to the implementation of large-scale engineering systems. In particular, the existence of many incompatible databases in different parts of an organization makes the introduction of a new, uniform system very difficult. Organizational issues also play a major role in achieving, or hindering, the implementation of new computer systems. This paper describes some of the technical innovations, and the motivations behind them, from one particular engineering design system. It also discusses the reactions of engineers and management, and explains why management may oppose innovation even when engineers enthusiastically support it.