ABSTRACT
The most critical factor in the success of Concurrent Engineering is the availability of resources to form multifunctional teams with all specialties present and active early. Schedules or workloads should never exceed the capability of design teams to develop good products. If this is a problem, the solutions include prioritizing product development projects to focus on the highest return/effort. Prioritization of product development efforts is necessary to grow revenue or profits without adding proportionate resources. Only those custom orders should be taken which can quickly and efficiently be customized designed, without draining resources from new product development. Rationalizing products eliminates or outsourcing demanding products, legacy products, and spare parts currently in production which consume too many hours of product development resources. Complete and stable product definitions and requirements documents need to be ensured to avoid expending valuable resources to redo previous work to accommodate new or different requirements.
