Concurrent Engineering Design and Manufacturing

Concurrent engineering will require appropriate sharing of data and knowledge among all those who contribute to the various stages and sub-stages of designing, building, or manufacturing of the product. Engineering Design and Manufacturing is often abstracted as a series of stages. Design in chemical engineering, starts from a chemical process, which basically consists of a set of chemical reactions. A specific approach to innovative design is proposed by K. N. Otto and K. L. Wood who suggest doing reverse engineering followed by a redesign phase, and illustrate this by redesigning a wok. Functional design refers to the design step intermediate between technical specifications and physical features. Redesign consists of starting from an existing product and trying to improve it. A good example is given by Otto and Wood when they first use reverse engineering on a kitchen appliance and then try to systematically improve the old design by testing alternative solutions.