An Evaluation of Research on Integrated Product Development
Management Science
Understanding the Impact of Collaboration Software on Product Design and Development
Information Systems Research
Concurrent Crashing and Overlapping in Product Development
Operations Research
Component-based records: A novel method to record transaction design work
Advanced Engineering Informatics
Conflict Management in Design Process: Focus on Changes Impact
Proceedings of the 2006 conference on Leading the Web in Concurrent Engineering: Next Generation Concurrent Engineering
An overlapping process model to assess schedule risk for new product development
Computers and Industrial Engineering
Framework for releasing preliminary information in product development
Advanced Engineering Informatics
Sources of errors in distributed development projects: implications for collaborative tools
Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology
Retail Channel Structure Impact on Strategic Engineering Product Design
Management Science
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence
A Hierarchical Framework for Organizing a Software Development Process
Operations Research
An analogy based estimation framework for design rework efforts
Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing
A review of concurrent optimisation methods
International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation
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We present an analytical model of concurrent engineering, where an upstream and a down-stream task are overlapped to minimize time-to-market. The gain from overlapping activities must be weighed against the delay from rework that results from proceeding in parallel based on preliminary information. Communication reduces the negative effect of rework at the expense of communication time. We derive the optimal levels of concurrency combined with communication, and we analyze how these two decisions interact in the presence of uncertainty and dependence. Uncertainty is modeled via the average rate of engineering changes, and its reduction via the change of the modification rate over time. In addition, we model dependence by the impact the modifications impose on the downstream task. The model yields three main results. First, we present a dynamic decision rule for determining the optimal meeting schedule. The optimal meeting frequency follows the frequency of engineering changes over time, and it increases with the levels of uncertainty and dependence. Second, we derive the optimal concurrency between activities when communication follows the optimal pattern described by our decision rule. Uncertainty and dependence make concurrency less attractive, reducing the optimal overlap. However, the speed of uncertainty reduction may increase or decrease optimal overlap. Third, choosing communication and concurrency separately prevents achieving the optimal time-to-market, resulting in a need for coordination.