Scheduling of mechanical design

Summary form only given as follows. Estimating the time design work will take remains a vital task, whether the work is done in a traditional or concurrent engineering environment. Extensive research into this task was carried out in four UK companies in the mechanical engineering sector, ranging in size from small businesses to multinationals. This paper presents a generic time estimation strategy for scheduling engineering design projects based on the results. The companies collaborating in the research represented a very wide size range, from a small business with around a dozen employees to the operating unit of a major multinational company with several thousand employees. Analysis of the data was used to generate a general model of estimation practice which was corroborated and validated by being fed back to the original sources and to an independent company not involved in the original data collection exercise. The model is designed to be of general relevance and is described at a high level to be customised for individual company use. The model received an encouraging response from those involved and is presented here as a useful starting point for further work in a poorly understood area