Parallel product development methods are called parallel because there is a more or less simultaneous start of activities in all involved functional departments of the company. The work within each department, however, is not performed in parallel, which would have required e.g. concept development performed in parallel with
Marketing Product
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design, but is still performed in a serial fashion and separated by few decision points often called gates, tollgates, and milestones.
Simultaneous Engineering (SE)
In an effort to increase the speed of product development during the 1970s and 1980s, the industry began to question the long development time inherent in the serial
development approach. To overcome that problem, the automotive industry developed a new methodology called Simultaneous Engineering – SE (e.g. Carlsson 1996).
Simultaneous in this context means that engineering design and process development are performed in parallel with separate starts for each activity, forming a waterfall pattern.
The principles and protocols of SE are adequately described in the Advanced Product Quality Planning and Control Planning (APQP 1994) manual, which was adopted in 1994 by the automotive giants Ford, Chrysler and General Motors. The Japanese automotive industry developed a similar model usually known as ”lean product development” (see figure X-2). As can be seen, different activities are introduced on a step-by-step basis, producing a “waterfall” start, in contrast to CE, where all activities start at the same time (see next section).
Figure X-2 Nissan’s development strategy in the 1980’s (Graves 1987) Concurrent Engineering (CE)
The term Concurrent Engineering was coined 1988 by the US Institute for Defence Analysis (see figure X-3). Their definition was: “Concurrent Engineering as a market-oriented and systematic method for integrated and simultaneous development of products and their accompanying processes, including sub-contracting, manufacture, maintenance and customer support. This method is intended to motivate designers and
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Research and development Product development
Production development Component development (search) (sökning)
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Group meetings (engineers/management)
other team members to optimise all elements in the product lifecycle - from delivery to scrapping - including user requirements, quality, time aspects and costs”. Since 1990s, the term Concurrent Engineering - CE has been more commonly used to describe simultaneous product development carried out by integrated teams.
Figure X-3: The original three parts of CE
With project organization (team) was meant that one puts together team members from different departments to form integrated teams.
With CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) environment was meant that one shall use the possibilities the computers provide leaving the manual environment that was dominant at that time. A popular saying was that “Throw out the drawing boards.”
With Methods of Analysis was meant to use methods such as QFD (Quality Function Deployment), FMEA (Failure mode Analyses), JIT (Just in Time), TQM (Total Quality Management), and DFMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly).
Integrated Product Development (IPD)
When SE/CE is combined with marketing development, the term Integrated Product Development – IPD - is applied (Andreasen 2002). Unfortunately, the definition and the understanding of IPD differ between countries and between researchers, a fact that the IPD workshops held in Magdeburg in Germany every second year have revealed.
The inventor of the term IPD appears to have been Professor Fredy Olsson at Lund University in Sweden. For the public he presented 1985 a model of parallel
development, as shown in figure X-4. His model has a ‘need’ as the starting point of the development process.
CAE environment
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CAE environment
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Figure X-4: Fredy Olsson’s IPD model (1985)
The reason Olsson selected the name “Integrated Product Development” was that
“Integrated teams” should be made up of people from all the four “branches” shown in figure X-4. Today this may seem quite natural but in 1985 such ideas were somewhat radical. The use of “Integrated teams” is however long established in the military world. The first to use “Integrated Army Corps” is said to have been Napoleon, who formed teams of infantry and cavalry (Smedberg 1995).
The model shown in figure X-4 was introduced by Olsson for Halmstad University as the basis for a possible new program when the university campus of Lund University was founded in 1985. At Lund University, the principles were considered too radical to be implemented at that time. The response in Halmstad was, however, positive and the Innovation Management Program began using this model as a concept for the education (Olsson 1992).
A modified IPD model described by Andreasen & Hein (1987), shown in figure X-5, has become better known internationally than Olsson’s model. As for the original, thhis IPD model is also based on “needs”. The model is designed to describe an effective work method in which various activities are carried out simultaneously preferably in big and middle sized enterprises.
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Figure X-5: Andreasen & Hein’s IPD model (1987)
QFD (Quality Function Deployment) is usually recommended for the identification of the ‘need’ in figure X-5, if project requirements are not already stated. Ulrich &
Eppinger (2000), however, prefer interviews for collecting customer data and they also stress the importance of observations. Active customer collaboration in combination with acquiring an enhanced understanding and awareness of customer needs and demands leads to a better grasp of overall product requirements. This can reduce expensive and unnecessary component selection.
Stage-Gate® methods
Based on quantitative studies that started in the 1970’s and now having accumulated a sample of more than 500 North American companies, Dr. Cooper and his colleges have designed a simple stage-and-gate process known as Stage-Gate® (see figure X-6). This process, it is claimed, had been adopted by more than 73% of North
American companies in 2006, making Stage-Gate® the dominant product development method, according to information found at http://www.prod-dev.com/. This is the official website of the Product Development Institute Inc, which was founded by Dr. Cooper and Dr. Edgett.
Figure X-5: The generic 5-stage Stage-Gate™ model by Cooper (1998).
Need
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Establish production method User survey
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Dynamic Integrated Product Development (D-IPD)
The euphoria about the possibilities with computer based systems that seems to have been the base for CE/SE gradually weakened in the early 1990th and 1996 professor Harald Meerkamm at the IPD Workshop in Magdeburg in Germany presented a model that more highlighted the importance of the product developers (figure X-6).
He also connected different DfX tools to the brain of the developer as well as DfX in his view was the heart of Methods in the figure.
Figure X-6: The IPD model of prof Harald Meerkamm from 1996
Professor Sándor Vajna however felt that importance of men should be strengthen even more and proposed a model of IPD is shown in figure X-7. The definition of IPD he proposed also shows that not only CAE methods but also manual methods are needed to develop products that fulfill different demands (Vajna & Burchardt 1998):
The Integrated Product Development (IPD) is a human-centered procedure of developing competitive products or services of high quality, within a reasonable amount of time, and with an excellent price-performance ratio.
IPD describes the integrated application of holistic and multidisciplinary methods, organization forms, and both manual and computer-supported tools with
minimized and sustainable use of production factors and resources
Men IPD Technology
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Men IPDIPD Technology
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Figure X-7: The early IPD model of professor Sándor Vajna (Vajna & Burchardt 1998)
Later Vajna and his research team in Magdeburg have placed the team members in the centre of the product development. Figure X-8 shows a picture from a PhD thesis 2006 from the chair of professor Vajna. As they underline the importance of a dynamic behavior, sometimes they call their philosophy of product development for Dynamic Integrated Product Development (D-IPD).
Figure X-8: The D-IPD model as per 2005 (Naumann 2005)