From Concept to Product - An Architecture for Parallel Engineering

One of the key objectives in the industrial community today is to produce a product faster, in order to respond to changing market conditions and capture market opportunities. There are several ways in which the engineering design, analysis, and manufacturing process can be made more efficient. Current application of computer aids to these functions can increase the speed and efficiency of each. However, as these niche applications each use their own representation of the product description, information passed from one to another requires modification and often regeneration, and functions occur sequentially.

To vastly reduce the time from concept to product, engineering functions must procede in parallel, or simultaneously, rather than sequentially. Product definition data must be available to all applications in a consistent form, and changes must be managed and communicated effectively.