Abstract :
Minor changes to the traditional functional design process, including such things as better training, computer aided engineering, improved design tools, etc., do not provide the improvements necessary for a business to become world-class. Only fundamental and radical changes to the whole process achieve this. The back-bone of these changes, methodologies to simplify and redesign the process itself, are discussed. These include putting in team working principles whereby multidisciplinary groups of engineers work together on the design process, thus breaking down the walls between various functions. These teams would typically include marketing people, mechanical design engineers, electronic design engineers, stress analysts, process engineers, heat treatment experts, manufacturing systems engineers and production engineers. They must therefore all have sufficient skills and knowledge of each other´s disciplines to be able to communicate effectively and work together as an integrated team. Alongside these team working principles, it is also necessary to put in place effective programme and project management to improve the setting up and control of new designs. It is a combination of business redesign, culture change and the broadening of the education of engineers that will lead to major improvements in manufacturing performance and not any of these on its own
