Concept and Model for a Concurrent Engineering Consulting Software System

Transcription

1 In: Proceedings of the 7th European Concurrent Engineering Conference (ECEC 2000), Leicester, United Kingdom, April 17-19, Concept and Model for a Concurrent Engineering Consulting Software System Kulwant Pawar, Svetan Ratchev, René Stach, Frithjof Weber Bremen Institute of Industrial Technology and Applied Work Science at the University of Bremen Hochschulring Bremen, Germany rst@biba.uni-bremen.de Phone: Fax: Keywords Concurrent Engineering, Consulting Software,, Solution Identification, Tool and Method Selection Abstract Concurrent Engineering has been successfully implemented in mainly large companies. CEPRA aims to introduce and optimise Concurrent Engineering in small and medium companies. Therefore, a methodology and a software system has been developed. The paper outlines the CEPRA methodology to establish Concurrent Engineering in small and medium companies; in addition an overview of the CEPRA consulting software system will be given. Introduction Many success stories describe the benefits which have been gained by introducing Concurrent Engineering in aircraft development. However, most cases focus on the implementation in large organisations. Only few descriptions about application of CE in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can be found, although SMEs have to cope with the same challenges as large enterprises have to (e.g. complex product structures, distributed development, long product life cycle, etc.). To close this gap, the CEPRA project is carried out. The CEPRA project Concurrent Engineering in Practice which is funded by the European Commission's ESPRIT and BRITE EuRam program, developed a methodology and software system which provides CE knowledge for SMEs especially in aeronautics. Three consulting steps are performed by CEPRA: assessing companies product development practice, suggesting possible solutions, and proposing formal methods and tools for overcoming retrieved weaknesses. The CEPRA Software System is currently being evaluated within several pilot projects in three European countries. A detailed survey identified that several approaches for assessment, solution identification, and tool and method identification have been developed in the past (Holsten et al. 1999). Different good approaches are available but an integration of assessment, solution identification, and tool and method selection is missing completely. Thus, the outcome of one step cannot be used as input for the next one. As integration is seen as essential for achieving more comprehensive consulting results, CEPRA aims to develop an integrated software system. The paper will outline the methodical approaches for the single modules and their integration; a prototype of the software system will be presented. CEPRA Methodology Overview The CEPRA Consulting Methodology and Software System is to assist in introducing and optimising CE in small and medium enterprises. The system consists of three basic steps (cf. Figure 1). CEPRA Consulting Software Solution Identifier Tool Selection Figure 1 The structure of the CEPRA Consulting Software System The assessment will assess the company s CE activities. Interactive questioning will lead to the company s as-is status contrary to the wished to-be status. The user can decide which area of his company to improve. The outcome of this interactive questioning are the strengths and

2 weaknesses of a company, where a benchmarking is possible. The strengths and weaknesses are transformed into data and visualised by a profile (the so-called Concurrent Engineering Profile CEP ). This profile is used to map the assessment to the following steps, i.e. the solution identification and the tool and method selection. Solution Identification The solution identification uses success and failure cases of CE solutions and past solution cases for suggesting potential solutions for specific problems. The solutions are assessed by a Concurrent Engineering Profile (CEP, see above) in the same way the companies are. Thus, the company s assessment can be mapped to potential solutions by retrieving similar CE profiles. The user will get detailed information about the retrieved solutions and cases and can use predefined criteria for rating as well as he can define own criteria to rate the retrieved solutions. The best solution (or the chosen one) will provide detailed information and will name methods and/or tools that have been applied within this solution case. The methods/tools as well as the solution s CEP are the input for the tool selection. Tool and Method Selection The tool and method selection will provide detailed information about formal methods and tools that have been applied within the retrieved solution case. This includes descriptions, guidelines, sources of supply and so on. Moreover, similar tools and methods can be found. To make a decision between several retrieved tools and methods, the user will get some criteria for ranking, whereas he can define own criteria. In this case, the software supports the decision making process of the user by calculating a rating for the retrieved tool/methods. If there is no tool/method provided by the Solution Identifier, the Tool Selection can identify appropriate tools/methods by the solution s CEP. If no solution can be found appropriate for the assessment, the Tool Selection can use the assessment s CEP and will try to find tools/methods that can support the company s situation, i.e. that can improve the company s weaknesses. Integration The integration of assessment, solution identification, and tool and method selection is mainly done by the Concurrent Engineering Profile (called CEP). This profile has been developed to firstly map assessment to solution identification and secondly to map solution identification to tool and method selection. For the case that solution identification is skipped, assessment can be mapped to tool and method selection directly. The rationale for the development of the CEP is based on the following hypothesis: CEPRA aims to bring Concurrent Engineering to small and medium enterprises. Thus, CEPRA has two focuses: CE and SMEs, and assessment, solution identification, and tool and method selection have to concentrate on these two aspects: CE and SMEs. But how can these be brought together? Each aspect can be divided into sub areas. CE is divided into single CE principles. These are: Standardisation, Integration, Continuous Improvement, Customer Supplier Focus, and Parallelism. These principles have to be applied to the entire company, especially to the product development process (Walker and Weber, 1997). SMEs are described by key process areas. The key process areas focus on the product development process. They are: Organisational Structure, Business Strategy, Manufacturing Processes and Equipment, Technology Deployment, Knowledge and Skill Base, and Human Empowerment. In order to ensure that CE can be established successfully in the entire company, all of these areas have to be confronted with the CE principles. I.e. every principle has to be realised in every area of the company. Visualising this concept results a matrix of CE principles and the company s areas. These are the reasons, why the Concurrent Engineering Profile has been developed (see also Wunram 1999). Each point of intersection between CE principle and company area can be assessed. If the principle is applied within this area there is a good rating, if the principle is not applied within the company area there is a bad rating. Solution cases are described by a Concurrent Engineering Profile as well. Every solution case has two situations: one before and one after applying the solution. Assuming that each time an assessment has been carried out, two Concurrent Engineering Profiles are available. The difference of these profiles shows which areas have been improved with respect to each CE principle and which have not. Having an assessment s profile the best fitting solution is the one that can improve the most weakest areas, i.e. the one can improve the lowest ratings. The layouts for the profiles of assessment and the solution identification are the same and the comparison can be carried out easily. This is very important for integration. and Solution Identification tools that are already available do not have a common interface and thus it is not possible to map the assessment s outcome to the solution identifier s data. Applying tools and methods correctly has an impact on the company s areas and CE principles likewise. Assuming that there has been an assessment of the

3 company before and after implementing and applying a new tool or method, the difference of both assessments shows the impact of the tool or method on the company with respect to CE. In order to map solutions to tools and methods, similar CEPs have to be found as tools and methods are needed that can improve the areas that have been or shall be improved within the solution. The probability is quite high that the retrieved tools and methods match the solution. Thus, it is possible to compare solution cases with tools and methods. Furthermore, solution cases often name specific tools and methods that have been applied. Then, there is no mapping needed. Appropriate tools and methods can be derived directly from the solution case and the tool selection can give further information about the named tools and methods and find similar ones. CEPRA Software The CEPRA software has been developed with a major focus on variability and the customers, namely small and medium enterprises. The software will support the users in creating their company assessment especially in creating a Concurrent Engineering Profile of their company, in mapping the profile to solution cases and finally in mapping the solution cases to tools and methods. The software comes along with a questionnaire to create the assessment s profile, with a repository of CE solution cases of SMEs and with a repository of information about CE tools and methods. The CEPRA software has been developed in Java with a client server architecture (applets and servlets) to ensure that it is applicable on many operating systems and can easily be applied via Internet access without installation of software. The three modules, Solution Identifier, and Tool Selection can be used as stand-alone-software. The of CEPRA Software enables the user to carry out an assessment of his company, to carry out a benchmarking and to create the Concurrent Engineering Profile. The software starts with a short tutorial in order to raise the user s awareness of Concurrent Engineering. Basic CE terminology is introduced to the novice user. In a first step, users can answer some basic questions. These questions aim to rate the process areas of the company. This step is called Initial Screening. The rating gives a quick overview over the company s strengths and weaknesses. Figure 2 Initial Screening Results The user can carry out internal and external benchmarking and finally decide on which areas he would like to concentrate. For a detailed assessment, the Target Data Collection will go deeper into the chosen company areas. Again, the user has to answer questions, that now go deeper into detail. The questions have two answers. One is the user s target value (what he would like to have) and one is the user s current situation (what he thinks that he is having actually). The difference between these values will be processed to the Concurrent Engineering Profile. This profile does not cover all company areas but the chosen ones from the user. Thus, the user is not forced to answer a lot of questions that do not refer to his interests or problems. The now available CEP is handed over to the solution identifier. Solution Identification The Solution Identifier processes the Concurrent Engineering Profile and brings out problems and solution cases that are similar to the assessed company s situation. Every solution case is described and broken down into single problem causes and intervention activities. This helps to understand the solution case and to adapt it to the user s situation. Figure 3 Solution Case, List of Causes The retrieved solutions can be compared and rated, to decide which one fits in order to the user s needs

4 the most. Predefined criteria including rating values for every solution are available. The user can add own criteria himself whereas he has to rate every retrieved solution on his own. As mentioned above, every solution case has assigned an own Concurrent Engineering Profile. This can be handed over to the tool selection to find appropriate tools and methods to put the chosen solution into reality. As solution cases often name tools and methods that have been applied, the names are sent to the tool selection as well to get further information about them. Tool and Method Selection The Tool Selection offers basic information and past experiences about Concurrent Engineering related tools and methods. All tools and methods are appropriate for aeronautics and SMEs. The tool selection starts with a list of tools and methods. These are related to the Concurrent Engineering Profile of an assessment, or to the CEP of a solution, or to the names of tools and methods within a solution case. The list offers basic descriptions to the tools and methods as well as assessment criteria and values for the user as e.g. price, quality, time effort for implementation, etc. Figure 4 Main Screen of Tool Selection The list can be sorted by these criteria, so that the user can quickly decide which tools or methods to chose. By clicking a selected tool or method a second window will open presenting a website with additional detailed information. This information comprises detailed descriptions, CE oriented descriptions, manuals, guides, tutorials, manuals, as well as sources for supply and links to further information. This supports the user to decide whether or not the selected tool or method is suitable for his needs. Figure 5 Extended Description (Website) for a Tool If the user has identified some suitable tools and methods he will get a quick decision support for he can define own criteria and weights for his decision. The tools and methods will the be rated to the user s criteria. To ensure, that the software can be used as standalone-tool a natural language search engine lets the user find appropriate tools and methods to his questions and keywords. Furthermore, there is a simplified kind of Concurrent Engineering Profile that tells in which CE and company areas a tool or method can be sensibly used (cf. Figure 4, lower right corner). So the user can browse through CE principles and company areas simultaneously. Conclusion First scenarios have shown that integration of assessment, solution identification and tool selection is very important for the consulting process. Every single step can help towards solving problems but only support for the complete problem solving process will help especially small and medium companies to become aware of their situation, to find solutions and to apply tools and methods to improve their situation. It has to be emphasised that the proposal for the CEP as a means to integrate the three different modules is based on theoretical reasoning and has not been evaluated yet. The authors expect to receive first results about the appropriateness of the approach from populating the repository and from the evaluation in the pilot Projects. CEPRA focuses on Concurrent Engineering in SMEs in aeronautics. Thorough considerations have shown that the developed methodology and software can easily be adapted to large companies and to companies outside aeronautics (Stach 2000). E.g. over 85% of the collected tools and methods are relevant outside aeronautics even in large companies. The same is expected to the solutions. If it is possible to define another profile for integrating assessment, solution identification, and

5 tool selection, the CEPRA approach could develop to a general consulting methodology and software. The six CEPRA pilot projects have started in February At the time of writing this paper, no results about the pilots were available yet. Nevertheless, the project is still open for external pilot partners that can use and test the software for free and get assisting consultancy form the project consortium. The consortium itself hopes to get feedback to improve CEPRA methodology and software. If you would like to become an external pilot partner or if you would like to have further information about the project, please do not hesitate to contact the author. Also, the author welcomes any comments about the theoretical approach. References Holsten; Arione; Barone; Weber CEPRA Deliverable 2.1: Capitalisation of existing Approaches. Available at Stach, René CEPRA Deliverable 3.4: Development of CE Tool Selection. Available at Walker, Roy; Weber, Frithjof A Practical Approach to Concurrent Engineering in Proceedings of the European Workshop held at Marinha Grande (Portugal, 15 th May 1997), pp Wunram, Michael Development of a Methodology and Mapping Mechanism for Assessing and Improving the Product Development Practice of Small and Medium Enterprises towards Concurrent Engineering Study Report. Available at