ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some of the key tools each major team member should use as he participates in the new product development process. It discusses the significance of the tool to the concurrent engineering (CE) process. The emergence of new tools has been a major factor in the emergence of CE. One of the tremendous changes of the improvement in software tools for the design engineer. These tools help capture design intent with the exactness needed to rapidly transfer designs into manufacturing processes. Tools have become a primary enabler for the concurrent engineer process. In general, there are many tools in use today for manufacturing engineers. For the most part they are oriented towards specific manufacturing processes. In addition to engineering tools the marketing and sales functions maintain software tools and databases. The networking of computers and specific tools which utilize the capability are very important in the speeding up of the development process.
