Assessing organizational readiness for implementing concurrent engineering practices and collaborative technologies

The barriers to concurrent engineering (CE) are cultural, organizational, and technological in nature. A successful implementation of CE requires that these barriers be identified up-front. The Concurrent Engineering Research Center (CERC) has developed a model, a measurement tool, and a methodology-the Readiness Assessment for Concurrent Engineering (RACE)-to assist CE implementors in identifying the barriers and prioritizing implementation actions. The authors discuss the readiness model, the process, and the questionnaire associated with RACE. They also identify some open issues concerned with conducting a readiness assessment and interpreting the results. Finally, the concept for a computer-based tool for readiness assessment is described