A Simultaneous Design Modeling Support System

Recently manufacturers are increasingly adopting the simultaneous engineering concept in designing and developing new products to shorten product development time while maintaining higher product quality and lower manufacturing costs, as the concept of simultaneous engineering has become a major product development practice of the late 1990s in the world class manufacturing. In this paper, we propose a framework of a Simultaneous Design Modeling Support System in which decisions on product design, process design and manufacturing system design are simultaneously made at an initial stage of product development period.