WORLD CLASS DESIGN TO MANUFACTURE

Putting Concurrent Engineering into Practice

Graeme Holmes Winwood Marketing Ltd, Manchester, UK
Acceptance of the need for vastly improved new product development processes has become almost universal among companies within a number of industrial sectors. Moreover, there is now a growing recognition that the basic process improvement concepts and techniques, and associated business benefits, are applicable to more than just high-volume manufacturing companies, competing in the automotive and consumer electronics markets. In particular, the practice of concurrent engineering (CE) is rapidly gaining importance within the aerospace industry. One already wellpublicized illustration of this has been Boeings development of its new 777, in which the adoption of CE techniques formed part of a radical departure from traditional design development practices. Development requirements in terms of product complexity and customer needs may be significantly different for new aircraft, compared with new cars or computers. There are, however, still the common factors of increasing global competition and the resulting market pressures which demand an improvement in the development process in order to provide a better product within reduced time-scales and costs. In fact, such tough demands for better and cheaper products, delivered to market faster, are becoming increasingly important for most businesses, regardless of whether they are multinational pharmaceutical organizations or small specialist producers of one-off items. One company which has recently gained a greater insight into the adoption of CE tools and techniques is Ricardo Hitec Ltd, one of the operating divisions of Ricardo Group plc, a major independent engineering design organization. Although its recent experience has been gained through being an integral part of a major aerospace programme, the company has recognized that the basic concepts and the attainable benefits would be equally valid for any of its engineering design projects.

Project
In late 1992, the UK-based Ricardo Hitec Ltd, which employs around 300 qualified personnel, secured a 4 million contract from Belfast-based Shorts Brothers to design and engineer all aspects of the aft fuselage section for the new Learjet Model 45. Gaining this contract was a major achievement, with all the other work for the aircraft, including the remaining three sections of the fuselage, being awarded to companies within the Bombardier group; De Havilland for the design and manufacture of the wings, Shorts as the main contractor for the fuselage, and Learjet undertaking the final assembly of fuselage and wings, completion of the aircraft, and its testing and certification. Moreover, this was no ordinary project. With the Learjet 45 programme, the Bombardier group has put considerable effort into successfully adopting a concurrent engineering approach, and this has represented a significant shift in working practices for both Ricardo and its client.

Process and Management

Ricardos task was to take the concept work produced by Shorts right through the
Ricardo Hitec Ltd.

World Class Design to Manufacture, Vol. 1 No. 5, 1994, pp. 38-42 MCB University Press, 1352-3074

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development of production schemes, to the completion of the detailed design together with the support activities for testing all the structures and systems installation associated with the aft fuselage. In accordance with the adopted approach, all necessary design inputs stress and weight considerations, plus production, assembly, reliability, and maintainability requirements have to be considered up-front with all the disciplines buying in to the design. To achieve this, a cross-functional design and build team (DBT) was formed which complemented Shorts own DBT in Belfast. The Ricardo DBT includes design engineers, tool design engineers, stress engineers and planning and production engineers, with an overlay of project and programme management to co-ordinate the work. The team included representatives from Shorts covering each of the three main design functions to provide a link to the clients design resource, and a small group of production engineers supporting Ricardos production input by providing process knowledge. The DBT which, at its peak, involved over 90 engineers dedicated to this single project, is collocated in a single open-plan office at Ricardos Bamber Bridge headquarters. Instead of team members reporting to their traditional functional heads, dedicated group heads for each discipline are included within the project team. To facilitate the interworking of the disciplines, these managers meet weekly to discuss general progress. For specific project areas, interdisciplinary meetings, called by the group leaders, are held on an as required basis. These meetings record progress, attain buy in to decisions, and establish sign off at the progressive design stages. In addition, owing to the collocation, impromptu meetings between small groups of engineers occurred frequently.

Technology
Adopting a CE approach for a large project requires a big commitment to the supporting infrastructure, and in particular the IT needs. To support fully its part of the project Ricardo invested in the latest design and engineering tools. Within the fuselage project, the use of CAD with full 3D solid model definition (both Ricardo and Shorts use a Computervision CADDS system) has eliminated the need for a high-level full-scale physical mock-up of the product. The mock-up is generated within the CAD system, and all the assembly, weights, and interfaces are validated on the screen. Direct data transfer between the Ricardo and the Shorts databases is achieved through a transparent data link, which is managed by an engineering data management system. This ensures that information released by Ricardo goes directly into Shorts system, and it also provides Ricardo with visibility of the work that is going on elsewhere. Therefore, where the company interfaces with the work done on other sections such as the fuel cell area it has been able to pull design data across from Shorts, and at the same time check the status of that information. Further, the link provides Ricardo with a line into Shorts computer-aided planning system, so that all the production planning is done directly on this system.

Success
The overall aim was to arrive at a design solution more efficiently, by reducing the traditional rework loop inherent within a sequential development process. This has been achieved and the process demonstrates a high degree of

Design build team

Screen capture componentry in the aft fuselage of the Learjet 45

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robustness. The CE approach has enabled the design of tooling and the generation of build information to be undertaken in parallel with the fuselage design. Also, the use of 3D modelling, plus the consideration of production and assembly requirements from the outset, has successfully eliminated the traditional intermediate stages of building a prototype for testing, and then undertaking redesign for manufacture. This is illustrated by the fact that, while Ricardo have only just completed all the detail design, and are now working on assembly and installation drawings, assembly of the first article (the pre-production fuselage built as part of the process to test rigorously and buy off tooling, jigs and assembly procedures) is already under way at Shorts Belfast site. Moreover, not only is this assembly work proving out the electronic mock-up, but also the ease of build due to the better quality design is further evidence to the success of the approach.

For this reason, the project has helped the company to define some essential issues that will prove invaluable for all future projects. From a management perspective, a critical issue for concurrent working is task visibility who is doing what, how far it has progressed, when it is required, and what needs to be done next. To maintain this visibility all the individual jobs must be monitored through their various stages. However, to manage this effectively for a CE process, with its inherent complexity, enhanced programme management procedures are required. As Mike Sheehan, Ricardo project manager, reports, the companys own project management system has had to be further developed to manage this requirement.

Communications and Discipline

The essence of concurrent engineering is that all the necessary design inputs are introduced as early as possible, so that the design evolves from a correct basis and separate activities can be carried out in parallel. However, with many projects, especially those which are complex and require a large team of people from various disciplines, it is not really feasible, or necessarily desirable, to have all the disciplines sit around a terminal and generate a design from scratch. Communication among these team members is vital, but some work has to occur serially. A designer may have an idea, but without some initial work he is unsure if it will work. Until this is completed, constant input from outside can only cloud the issue. As Sheehan observes, Instead of a sequential process of long periods of design, followed by stress analysis, then manufacturing input, and back to design for reworking, what we have found is that activities still have a tendency to occur serially, but in much smaller discrete chunks, and with some overlapping. The result is that there is considerably less rework and you get to a fully developed product, where all of the inputs have been taken into account, much quicker. Thus all input to the design still has to be made as early as possible, but not necessarily constantly or right from the start. However, maintaining this right level of interdisciplinary communication within a large team is difficult. Critically, such a process places emphasis on individual discipline. Discipline is important in making sure everyone works to the procedure, stresses Sheehan. He adds, Especially when people are coming from a culture where they are used to working on their own, there can be a tendency for

Shorts have seen exceptional first article inspection pass rates

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As William Morris, VP Learjet 45 project, reports, Shorts have seen exceptional first article inspection pass rates, with a better than ten times reduction in failures. He adds, The first article build is progressing remarkably well by any standard, with the quality of the fit outstanding. Even at this stage the expected benefits are being surpassed, showing just how well the theory has been brought through into practice. This achievement is to everyones benefit, explains Morris. Shorts are gaining directly from the design and assembly quality which has benefited from the early inputs of their production and assembly workforce. The resultant reduction in the number of build problems also means fewer design changes with which Ricardo, who will support this project through to certification, have to deal, thereby releasing valuable resources.

Lessons Learned
Working in teams was not new for Ricardo, but the scale of the involvement in terms of the breadth of disciplines involved and the relationship with the client was a new approach.

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the designer to plough on with his own thoughts without consultation with the other disciplines and agreement with the way it should be done. We have had occasions where a design has got through the system and reached final sign-off before people realize that they have not seen it before, and have thus refused approval. Overall, Ricardo have managed successfully to establish the principles for operating as an effective team. Also, through the DBT approach, most engineers have gained a greater insight into the requirements of the different disciplines, and this enables them to incorporate these perspectives in their work. But admittedly there are still pockets of inflexibility where individual personalities come into play and work against the CE activity. Therefore, states Sheehan, although great strides have been made in adopting CE, the company recognizes the need continually to improve communication and teamworking skills, thus getting designers to accept outside input more readily and subsequently to reduce further the size of the serial work activities.

Elements of Integrated Product Development

Decision Making and Ownership

There have been a number of issues in the area of decision making that Ricardo have found to be essential ingredients for successful CE. Within a CE environment, with many different disciplines working on different aspects of the same design simultaneously, any serious problems can have major knock-on effects across the whole process, with the resultant cost and time implications that this entails. Ricardo has recognized the importance of eliminating this risk as much as possible by establishing higher levels of concept definition confidence before committing to detailed design. Mike Sheehan confirmed that With the CE approach it is essential when making decisions to move onto the next stage, ensuring that it is taken into account that you are committing not only to the design but also to the planning and tooling. Decision Making Within cross-functional teams it is easy to find the different disciplines pulling in slightly different directions. Therefore it is essential to a have a decision maker who will listen and is capable of understanding different views, but who is also prepared, for the sake of progressing the design, to make a decision, even if there is not total agreement.

In order to help to place the right bias on any decision making, Ricardo uses a responsibility matrix. This basically identifies what work has to be done against who has responsibility for doing it. For example, explains Sheehan, There might be some areas where a particular disciplines view takes priority, so then the team discussion can be blended in relation to this main priority. However, as he stressed, individuals may take ownership of work, or problems, but it must remain a team effort for their resolution. Capturing Development Decisions Finally, along with all the necessary team meetings, it is important to provide a method of recording the observations and decisions that are made, and a way of making this information available to everyone. To achieve this Ricardo have adopted the use of an integrated work statement (IWS). This is a multi-user document, contained within the Shorts engineering database, that records the evolving product definition, with each discipline adding their comments about agreed design decisions. Through this IWS document it is possible to review, for a particular design area, the comments logged on how and why a design has evolved. Within the development process, a design cannot progress without the agreement of all the disciplines. This system not only records that agreement, reports Sheehan, but also provides people who have any misgivings with the oppportunity to have these recorded. The team may decide to ignore such input at the time, but the opinion has been established and made available for others to see and take note. The system also provides a buy off agreement between Ricardo and client specifying agreed required configuration and stops creeping

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definition from occurring without recognition and further agreement.

Conclusion
As Sheehan concludes, There is no one answer, or particular method by which to conduct a concurrent engineering project, but there are specific points that make the difference and these will undoubtedly be valid for future work, whether within the aerospace industry or transferred over to our other areas of activity general manufacturing and the nuclear industry. It has been one of Ricardos strategic aims to pull all its disciplines together to offer a fully integrated development capability. This could include feeding in the Advanced Manufacturing Technology skills available within the consultancy group at Ricardo Hitec Ltd. There is also the potential for developing strategic partnerships with tool and component manufacturers in order to provide a complete design-to-manufacture service.

There needs to be constant communication of procedural requirements

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Whatever the combination, the company has now put theory into practice and demonstrated that within the right process structure and working environment it is possible to achieve this goal. Moreover, it has shown that through establishing concurrent working practices it can gain the advantages of increased flexibility and a more robust process, while a team focus reduces development risks and provides an overall higher design quality. However, to pull all these skills together there needs to be constant communication of procedural

requirements and of how work is progressing. In fact project management is an area the company is looking to reinforce and strengthen further. Team players are also vital, insists Sheehan, people who are prepared to work and learn from others, and other disciplines, rather than think that they have all the answers. Furthermore there must be leaders who will take ownership of problems and who will seek out solutions through the DBT. Finally, technology can prove a major component in supporting the DBT philosophy. The electronic 3D mock-up digital pre-assembly has proved to be very beneficial, providing a high level of confidence that everything will go together properly, without the need for physical prototypes. The use of such a system, along with transparent links that connect Ricardos engineering team directly with engineers at a clients site is applicable to the design of any product. With the increasing number of companies looking for outsourcing partners, rather than simple subcontract designers, the lessons learned and recent experience gained by Ricardo will, claims Sheehan, prove a considerable enhancement to the companys competitiveness. In summary, confirms Adam Bodnar, managing director of Ricardo Hitech, The Ricardo strategy is to progress from supplying skilled resources on demand to offering integrated design solutions to complex critical-path tasks.

Ricardo Hitech Ltd is based at Club Street, Bamber Bridge, Preston, Lancashire PR5 6FN. Tel: 0772 34051; Fax: 0772 627972. Graeme Holmes can be contacted at Winwood Marketing Ltd, Newton Silk Mill Business Centre, Oldham Road, Manchester M10 6HB. Tel: 061 682 4424; Fax: 061 682 4441.

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