Concurrent engineering: making it work

Concurrent engineering has been a subject of discussion and on the change agenda for over ten years. Many companies claim to be doing it. Even so, the problems in communicating the customer´s values to the engineers across the business, through the supply chain and into manufacturing have proved hard to solve. This article describes work undertaken during 2000/2001 in a bus manufacturer in Hungary to integrate better the work of its engineering functions and suppliers´ activities with the operational processes for bidding for work, delivering orders and introducing new products.