Concurrent engineering approach to the development of the TM6000

The Personal Productivity Products (PPP) division of Texas Instruments invested a tremendous effort in setting up “World Class” processes and strategies that could strategically position PPP as a leader in the laptop industry. The focus was on improving the entire design process, stressing the importance of several key areas: concurrent engineering; reverse engineering; producibility engineering; and continuous flow manufacturing. By setting up a concurrent engineering design team early in the conceptual design of the TM6000, the design team was able to partition the unit into easily replaceable modular sub-assemblies. The use of modularity enabled PPP to achieve the assembly time goals, and design to cost goals. Concurrent engineering, reverse engineering, and design for assembly have proven to be very powerful tools in achieving the goals and focused needed attention on the overall manufacturability of the systems