4.1 Discuss the following:
(a) Serial Engineering
• It is also known as sequential engineering.
• Its basic concept is that the departments supply information to the design of a product only after the product has been designed, verified and prototyped. In other words, the various functions such as design, manufacturing and customer service are separated which sometimes result in delays in marketing the product.
• Each stage of the development process is carried out separately, and the next stage cannot start until the previous stage is finished. Therefore the information flow is only in one direction, and it is not until the end of the chain that errors, changes and corrections can be relayed to the start of the sequence, causing estimated costs to be under predicted. This can cause many problems; such as time consumption due to many modifications being made as each stage does not take into account the next.
• This is also known as over the wall engineering as each stage blindly throws the development to the next stage over the wall.
(b) Concurrent Engineering
• Contrary to sequential engineering, concurrent engineering integrates all function areas in the design process. The decision making process in the concurrent engineering environment differs from that in sequential engineering in that decisions are taken considering the constraints of all stages of the product life cycle at every stage.
• It is a management and engineering philosophy for improving quality and reducing costs and lead-time from product conception to product development.
• It is a multidisciplinary, cross functional team approach that concerts effort to fully integrate the design, analysis and engineering functions of products and processes.
• In today's business world, corporations must be able to react to the changing market needs rapidly, effectively, and responsively. They must be able to reduce their time to market and adapt to the changing environments. Concurrent...