An examination of design processes adopted by a company involved in design-based manufacturing and forming an approach to an optimum system: A case study in Teba-Günkol

Abstract

Today, a company's competitive advantage is directly related to its capacity to develop new products and global competitive pressure has motivated many companies to change to a more rapid form of product development with an emphasis on team and cross functional working. Concurrent Engineering (CE), or Concurrent Design, is a widely recognized approach to improving product introduction which attracts increasing attention of companies throughout the world. In the context of today.s manufacturing industry, design is essentially a social and collaborative process, thereby imposing cross-functional integration on companies. CE can be defined as a development philosophy that could improve design and produce better process quality via both integration and coordination. The CE approach enables synchronization of structural design and manufacturing processes, thus reduces product development time, and decreases costs by eliminating many of the trial-error steps. This research focuses on CE by using a case-study approach carried out in a Turkish company which has been selected as a representative sample of the companies involved in design-based manufacturing in Turkey. In this thesis, the traditional methods used by the company are extensively analysed and a Concurrent Engineering system for the optimum design and manufacturing of new products is proposed. The objective of this study is to provide further insight into the organizational aspect for success in Concurrent Engineering practices in design-based manufacturing.