Industry Best Practices

[BPR...@cmsa.gmr.com]

I have pleasure informing you about the availability of a TEXTBOOK
that covers many of the INDUSTRY'S "BEST PRACTICES" for experienced
engineers that were found relevant by the independent committee on
ASME/NSF Product Realization Process (PRP) Project. If you didn't know,
the findings of the Industry Task Force Report were presented & released
at the ASME Annual Congres'95 in San Francisco, November 13, 1995.

Though, the two (the CE book and the ASME/NSF Survey) were independent
undertakings, I was surprised to know that many of the
identified Industry's best practices were not taught as
part of the U. S. University/College Design curriculum or coures.
I was equally surprised to know that many of those identified best
practices found their way into the Concurrent Engineering Fundamentals
Book, mentioned earlier. I was not a party to this (ASME/NSF
study) and I did not know about it until the day of the presentation.

The good news is that now, there is a book that can be used to teach
those best practices. Don't take my words for it. Please do your own
independent evaluation.

Thank you and best wishes for the New Year,

Biren Prasad
EDS/General Motors
__________________________________________________________________________

BOOK TITLE/SUBTITLE
Concurrent Engineering Fundamentals:
Integrated Product and Process Organization
by Biren Prasad
Published by: Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Volume I: 1996, 502 pp., ISBN # 0-13-147463-4
(Just Published)
Volume 2: 1996, 500 pp., ISBN # 0-13-396496-0
(Due Spring 1996)

The critically important elements of product and
process organization comprise identifying and
evaluating product development practices, eliminating
wastes and rework, decomposing tasks, adding product
values, and integrating the product, process and
organization (PPO) into a taxonomic system of product
realization. Concurrent Engineering Fundamentals gives
an integrated view of this organization, covering
management's organizational and cultural concerns, as
well as the methodological fields of taxonomy,
including philosophical, conceptual and virtual
perspectives.

The book, which largely contains fundamental ideas, is
organized into nine chapters. The book begins by
discussing the emerging concept of a virtual
enterprise, breaking down organizational boundaries and
taking a holistic view of life-cycle management. It
then lays down a set of modern manufacturing invariant,
which focuses on 4Ms (models, metrics, measures and
methodology) for PPO as well as model enactment based
on cognition to represent human behaviors. Finally, the
book describes an integrated taxonomic constructs for
product realization from its inception to disposal.

Concurrent Engineering Fundamentals presents the key
concepts of Concurrent Engineering that is
revolutionizing the manufacturing industry. It also
describes the performance indicators to meeting the
world class competitiveness challenges that industries
are facing today. With Concurrent Engineering:
Fundamentals, you will learn proven CE techniques to
bring new products to market faster. The book features
process reengineering to help you discover your
company's strengths and weaknesses, information
modeling to capture the invariant of CE environments
and system engineering to describe techniques of how to
achieve gold successes. You will learn how to make
quantum improvements in key PPO categories such as
productivity, quality, cost effectiveness, design for
X-ability, responsiveness, customer satisfaction, etc.

Concurrent Engineering Fundamentals is fully illustrated
and each chapter includes test problems and suggestions
for additional readings. Professors and students will
find this book quite appropriate for teaching capstone
courses in design education curriculum. The book is
also beneficial to practicing engineers in industries
as well as executives managing CE projects. This is an
excellent introduction to researchers interested in
advancing the key CE ideas. The book will be of
particular interest to all who are interested in
understanding the process of CE and determining its
impact on quality, cycle-time, resource allocations
and teamwork.

If you would like to get a copy of the Table of
Contents, the CE Fundamentals textbook, or to discuss
technical details concerning Concurrent Engineering,
please direct your inquiries or Email your request to:

Dr. Biren Prasad
CERA Institute
Electronic Data Systems, General Motors
P.O. Box 250254
West Bloomfield, MI 48325-0254
Tel: (810) 696-5487: Fax: (810) 661-8333
Email: <bpr...@cmsa.gmr.com>