Learn in the textbookEngineering Technologies That Support Design and Development
DefinitionConcurrent engineering (コンカレントエンジニアリング) is a method that runs the stages of product development in parallel, overlapping them in time instead of making each wait its turn, so as to shorten development time.
ExplanationIn traditional sequential development, the stages from design to manufacturing are finished one at a time, but this method lets their periods overlap. Because design, manufacturing and other departments work together from the start and build concerns such as ease of manufacture into the design early, there is also less rework (手戻り), where a problem found in a later stage forces an earlier stage to be redone.
AnalogyIt is like moving house and loading each packed box onto the truck as soon as it is ready, instead of waiting until everything is packed. The more the jobs overlap, the sooner you can leave.
Memory hook"Concurrent" comes from Latin for "running together". Picture several streams of work running side by side at the same time.