Structuring a Concurrent Design Environment for Effective Product Design and Development

Coordination within the team is a cornerstone of effective teamworking. This paper argues that Concurrent Design is a means to achieve effective product design and development. Concurrent Design is a proposed system for the organisation and management of multidisciplinary project teams and activities for the purpose of concurrent product development. Concurrent Design comprises mechanisms which support the product design process by bringing together appropriate resources and by co-ordinating and controlling the whole development process to ensure that the product reaches the market in a timely manner, without incurring unnecessary cost. This paper considers new methodologies towards the development of a management support environment for new product development and proposes a framework for the structuring and modelling of the teamworking environment. It has been developed from research that has included an investigation of methodologies for concurrent product development, organisational design, and a survey of problems and priorities of new product development in the UK textile and apparel industries. The paper analyses design activities from different design aspects within a teamworking organisation, and describes the structure of teamworking co-ordination in a product design setting. Finally, a model for Concurrent Design is proposed for effective product design and development.