Journal of the Operational Research Society

ISSN: 0160-5682 (Print) 1476-9360 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tjor20

Concurrent engineering: a competitive strategy for

process industries

A Gunasekaran

To cite this article: A Gunasekaran (1998) Concurrent engineering: a competitive strategy for
process industries, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 49:7, 758-765, DOI: 10.1057/
palgrave.jors.2600549

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2600549

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Journal of the Operational Research Society (1998) 49, 758±765 #1998 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved. 0160-5682/98 $12.00
http://www.stockton-press.co.uk/jor

Concurrent engineering: a competitive strategy for

process industries
A Gunasekaran
Brunel University
Concurrent Engineering (CE) is a systematic approach to the integrated, simultaneous design of both products and their
related processes, including production. A number of research reports are available in the literature to deal with CE and
its applications in manufacturing industries. However, the application of CE in Process Industries (PI) has not received
enough attention from researchers and practitioners for improving productivity and quality. To use CE effectively in
process industries requires accuracy of data and a common architecture. In PI, the products are processed with minimal
interruptions in any one production run or between production runs of products that exhibit process characteristics, such
as liquids, ®bres, powders and gases. The general characteristics of this industry add value to materials by mixing,
separating, forming, or chemical reactions. PI often initiate their ¯ow with only a few raw materials and subsequently
process a variety of blending and resplitting operations. Nevertheless, there are many common characteristics such as
material and information ¯ow between manufacturing and PI. This indicates the application areas of CE in PI and hence
to improve the competitiveness of PI in terms of ¯exibility and responsiveness. An attempt has been made in this paper to
study how CE can be utilized to design products, production system, and production planning and control (PPC) system
for improving productivity and quality in PI.

Keywords: process industries; concurrent engineering; integration; productivity and quality

Introduction years, and now invest more in manufacturing control soft-

ware such as Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII)
During the last decade, a number of articles have appeared
and Statistical Process Control (SPC) than engineering.1
discussing the application of computers in process indus-
Unlike manufacturing, the plant design and installation play
tries (PI). However, they have mostly dealt with various
a crucial role in improving productivity and quality in PI.
aspects of production control. One can ®nd very little
Therefore, the application of CE should not only be
application of new methods of manufacturing such as
con®ned to product design in PI with the objective to
Computer-Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), Just-In-Time
improve the effectiveness of down stream activities in the
(JIT), Total Quality Management (TQM) and Concurrent
life cycle, but also in the design of plant and installation.
Engineering (CE) in PI. Both the manufacturing and
Eversheim2 de®ned simultaneous engineering as `an orga-
process industries have the same objectives such as inven-
nisational strategy' with the idea to shorten the time of
tory and cycle time reduction, reduce the time to reach
product design by simultaneous planning of product and
market, high quality products and improved productivity.
production. Concurrent engineering may also be referred to
These indicate that most of the new methods and technol-
as simultaneous or parallel engineering. As mentioned
ogies used in manufacturing can also be applied to process
earlier, the plant design and installation form an integral
industries. Unfortunately, very little effort has been made to
part of the operational strategy of the whole system in PI.
implement these new methods and in turn the appropriate
This particular distinction between manufacturing and PI
technologies of manufacturing in PI. The application of
must be recognised while applying CE. Application of CE
computers in PI has mostly been in the areas of manage-
will improve the ¯exibility and responsiveness of the PI and
ment accounting, bidding, and process control. It has
in turn the competitiveness.
always been con®nekd to computation-intensive and the
From the above analysis, it can be seen that the process
existence of large databases of construction cost data.
industries have automated their process control using
Process industries have increased their investment over
appropriate hardware and software.3 However, there are
still a number of concepts and technologies such as JIT,
Correspondence: Dr A Gunasekaran, Department of Manufacturing and CE and MRP that have not been successfully utilised in PI.
Engineering Systems, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH,
UK.
One of the most important of them is CE that has not been
E-mail: A.Gunasekaran@brunel.ac.uk given due consideration in PI. As noted earlier unlike in
 A GunasekaranÐConcurrent engineering 759

manufacturing, the plant design and installation become analysis, maintenance and reliability are considered sepa-
part of the total design process in PI. Mostly, CE has been rately from the design process, (f) design data is fragmented
used to develop new products and production control and it is dif®cult to maintain consistency always across
systems. Nevertheless, the application of CE should also various representations, (g) information is lost as the design
be extended to the design and installation of process plant. progresses. The design intent may be lost by the time the
This indicates that CE should be applied for both upstream documentation gets to the producibility experts, and (h)
issues (such as competitors, economic conditions, market designers are usually not aware of cost reduction as a
potential and customer requirements) and downstream realistic goal, due to the lack of cost estimation tools.
activities (such as design, engineering production and These dif®culties can be overcome by the new method of
distribution), and has potential in PI. Realising the compe- design based on concurrent engineering.
titiveness of PI, the application of CE in PI has been A model to illustrate the principle of CE is presented in
investigated in this paper. This paper ®rst analyses the Figure 1. CE is a systematic approach to an integrated,
characteristics of PI and next brings to the fore the aspects concurrent design of products, process and installation of
of how the productivity and quality can be improved by plant, and processing of products, considering the related
implementing CE. downstream aspects and the elimination of non-value
adding activities. This can be achieved through a multi-
disciplinary team approach which intends to motivate
Concurrent Engineering (CE)
process designers, plant designers and installations and
In PI, productivity improvements, therefore tend largely to participants throughout various design processes, to
come from process improvements. In the recent years, consider all elements of the products life cycle from the
application of computers in PI has increased over time to inception through to the disposal of product, taking into
integrate various functional areas such as marketing, design account quality, cost, time, function, the client and end user
and engineering, production and distribution by improving requirements.6,7 From the conceptual model, it can be seen
the information ¯ow and hence the material ¯ow. Also, the that the activities have been carried in sequence such as
multimedia application in PI leads to interactive training production, design and engineering, accounting, perfor-
that aims to eliminate any non-value adding activities such mance measures, personnel and distribution will now be
as rework and maintenance. Product life cycles are getting performed in parallel in the case of CE.
shorter, and the close coupling of business and technology
strategy has become critical. Cleetus4 states, `CE is a
systematic approach to integrated and concurrent develop- Characteristics of process industries and the application
ment of a product and its related processes, that emphasises of CE
response to customer expectations and embodies team
values of co-operation, trust and sharing in such a manner Process industries obtain their raw materials from mining
that decision making proceeds with large intervals of paral- or agricultural industries. These raw materials have natural
lel working by all life-cycle perspectives early in the
process, synchronised by comparatively brief exchanges to
produce consensus'. In the past, computers have been used
mostly in different functional areas in an isolated manner
without taking into account the total system integration.
However, CE can be used as a strategy for system integra-
tion with the objective to improve ¯exibility and respon-
siveness by developing a high variety and low volume PI.
This will certainly change the tradiational characteristics of
PI to a more customer-focused industry in terms of offering
quality goods and competitive prices.
Some of the dif®culties associated with the traditional
sequential method of operations have been highlighted by
Bedworth et al5 as follows: (a) design alternatives are
quickly eliminated in the interest of time and one particular
narrow idea is pursued, (b) the de®nition of design detail is
costly in labour hours, and involves much manual effort, (c)
the design process is characterised by a rigid sequence of
design decisions, (d) producibility and supportability issues
are not considered until relatively late in the process, when a
design may be very costly, (e) production planning, support Figure 1 A model to illustrate concurrent engineering.
760 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 49, No. 7
variations in quality. For example, crude oils from different
oil ®elds have different sulphur contents and different
proportions of naphtha, distillates, and fuel oils. Oil re®nery
designs, production plans and operating schedules must
account for this variability. Another aspect of materials
variability associated with natural raw materials, is that
yield or potency is usually not known or measured until the
process is started. The variability in raw materials quality
often determines which products will be produced. If you
get a different quality, it may mean reorder and recycle.
This can result in shortages, but if the safety stocks are
established considering the frequency of these occurrences,
the stock-out impact can be minimised. Variations in raw
materials quality often lead to variations in the bill of
material (BOM). This requires a dynamic system to
respond to the changes in BOM. Therefore, the variability
in raw materials and processes, and ¯exibility should be
taken into account during the design and installation of
plant as well as the processes required for a set of ®nal
products. This justi®es the application of CE in PI with the
objective to reduce the overall time to reach market. Also,
pilot projects using computer simulation (including virtual
design and production) based on CE principles will lead to
an effective implementation of CE in PI.
For example, variations in the moisture contents, acidity,
colour, viscosity or concentrations of active ingredient
proportions to make ®nished product quality speci®cations
lead to variations in BOM. Another factor that causes
variations in BOM is the price of alternative ingredients.
Seasonal considerations, the availability of raw materials,
or even the unique vessel, tank or line availability can
govern the best recipe for production.8 These again imply
the characteristics of material ¯ow and their control during
the design of processes and plant and its installation using
the principle of CE. With the developments of advanced
technologies for rapid prototyping, the design and installa-
tion of process plants and conducting performance analysis
together with CE principles will help to improve productiv-
ity and quality not only at the product/process design levels
but also at the plant design and operational levels.
As noted earlier, PI often initiate its ¯ows with only a
few raw materials and subsequently undergoes a variety of
blending and resplitting operations. In other words, many
products are produced from a few kinds of raw materials,
compared to the usual bill in discrete manufacturing, in
which end item contains many different components. There
are two dimensions by which one can categorise process
industries: degree of product differentiation and material
¯ow complexity in¯uences the kind of processes required
and hence the type of process plant and operations control.
Therefore, the concept of CE can be applied to plant design
and installation, and it must be considered as an integral
part of the whole design process in PI. The degree of
product differentiation refers to the marketing environment
of the business and the material ¯ow complexity refers to
Figure 2 Network of ®rms linked to the chemical industry.
the way the production process is organised. This indicates
that there is a need to develop an integrated system that will
be more ¯exible in terms of variety of products and the
required operations. To realise such objectives, CE can be
used in rapid prototyping for an effective functional inte-
gration and eliminating non-value adding activities.9
The networks of ®rms involved in process industry are
shown in Figure 2 and it shows all the active participants in
the operations of a chemical company. The company
traditionally carries out its operational activities in
sequence. However, to eliminate the downstream non-
value adding activities, all the participants including
process designer, process equipment designer and manu-
facturer, raw material supplier, distribution, plant design
and installation and retailer and the corporate management
of the process company, should be involved at the early
stage of the selection of raw materials and design of
process/product and process equipment. Further details
are discussed in the next section on how the PI can
implement CE in the design of process/product, plant and
operations.
In process/¯ow businesses, the lead-time is mainly
determined by the cycle time, namely the time between
consecutive runs of the same product. The actual proces-
sing time per unit is very small, but due to the `high
change-over times' and the `high production speed', the
production orders are large. The number of different
products is not only limited but there is also relatively
little variety between the products. Little variety, low
product complexity and the small number of production
steps cause all products to have `the same routing'. Since
the total market demand for the relatively small number of
products is high, investments in specialised single-purpose
equipment are economically justi®able.8 The use of single-
purpose equipment simpli®es the determination of available
capacity: usually the installations are run continuously
(rough-the-clock production). However, the current market
demand is focused on customised products/services. The
 A GunasekaranÐConcurrent engineering 761

traditional way of performing operations using single-
purpose equipment should be changed. The application of
CE to PI might change the above traditional characteristics
of the process industries including the high set-up cost and
low variety products. By applying CE to plant design and
installation, non-value added activities both in the upstream
and downstream activities of the plant can be eliminated at
the early stage of the design process of process/product,
plant and operations. This will help to improve the ¯exibility
(variety and volume) of the production system in PI. For
example, while designing the plant with equipment suppli-
ers, the set-up cost can be reduced drastically with the help
of suitable change-over equipments (for example robots),
automated cleaning technology, modi®ed tooling, etc.,
Moreover, designing a plant based on CE principles and
considering the involvement of equipment and raw material
suppliers at the early stage of the plant design can reduce the
set-up cost and increase the overall ¯exibility of PI.
Table 1 presents the differences in the characteristics of
discrete manufacturing and process industries. For exam-
ple, raw material selection is important in PI as this
in¯uences the processes required to produce ®nal product
and hence determines the equipment design, design of the
plant and operations. Therefore, the raw material selection
should be given due consideration while taking into
account the process, quality and other operational aspects.
Similarly, the safety and environmental aspects of PI are
highly important as the type of materials used are hazar-
dous such as poisonous chemicals/gases. Therefore, these
aspects should be given due consideration in the design and
installation of plant and hence the operations. Retailers and
buyers of the products are working together during the
product design phase, so that demands on the products and
hence the operations are speci®ed at the earliest possible
resulting in shorter innovative times and lower costs.
The following conclusions are evident after studying the
characteristics of PI and the potential for the application of
CE in PI:
(i) PI includes continuous production, little variety, low
product complexity and the same routing for all
products. However, the current market situation is
different and warrants customised products and in
turn a ¯exible production system.
(ii) Traditionally, PI includes special-purpose equipments.
However, customised products require a ¯exible
production system. This needs the co-operation
between equipment suppliers, plant design and instal-
lation contractor, and plant operators.
(iii) Since the set-up cost is high in PI, there is a need for
reducing it to minimise the switch over costs. Again,
this emphasises the co-operation between equipment
manufacturers, plant design and installation contractor
and operators of the plant with the objective to mini-
mise the set-up costs, say for example with the help of
robots and automation in set-up operations, and hence
to increase the ¯exibility of the production system for
customised products.
(iv) Rapid prototyping in the design and installation of
process plants. Multimedia, Quality Function Deploy-
ment (QFD) and simulation can be used as tools of CE
to reduce production lead-times.
(v) Multi-purpose equipment with possibilities to extend
the product mix can be used. This would increase the
¯exibility of the production system.
(vi) There is a need for integration of information
exchange between equipment suppliers, plant designer
and installer and company operator using CE.
(vii) PI is labour intensive and therefore, there is a need for
employee co-operation by open communication,
education, training and empowerment. More automa-
tion in the operations of the plant will require knowl-
edge workers and support services to operate the
system effectively.
Plant wide controllability analysis in the conceptual
design stage is an issue that has been raised by PI. In this

Table 1 Characteristics of process industries vs manufacturing industries

Characteristics Discrete manufacturing Process industries

Raw materials Optional consideration at the design
stage
Process design Slight impact on the plant design and
installation
Shorter production cycle
Small batch production
Production Assembly
High variety and low volume
Discrete material flow
Process/production equipment designer General purpose machines
Safety and environmental aspects Slightly relevant at the design stage
Design and installation of plant Less important
Early consideration at the design stage
Highly influence the design and
installation of the plant
Longer production cycle
Large batch production
Mixing/blending
High volume and low variety
Continuous material flow
Special purpose equipments
Highly relevant at the design stage
Highly important
762 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 49, No. 7
particular approach, the role of CE is evident since it
re¯ects that at the conceptual design stage, opportunities
exist to optimise the downstream operations in PI. This is
somewhat against the conventional treatment of the control
as an add-on to process design after the ¯ow sheet structure
has already been determined.
As noted earlier, a number of tools are available for the
design of process using CE and they are: (i) computer
simulation and (ii) process modeler. Whenever one looks
nowadays, activities focused on information are taking hold
in the chemical community, whether in research, process
design, or sales and marketing. For the process engineer,
the developments include new designing capabilities and
ease of using for process modelling and simulation. The
modelling and simulation with CE can be seen as a critical
enabling technology essential today in PI to capture, test,
integrate, transfer, and institutionalise knowledge required
along the value adding information supply chains, from
suppliers and in turn their suppliers to our customers. These
become essential as companies that use tools effectively
will provide increasing value to the market place and those
do not will be pushed aside. It is now clear that in the batch/
mix problem, there are more degrees of freedom, and hence
there are more interrelationships between production units
and material ¯ows. Both production ¯ow complexity and
materials complexity are high. Furthermore, the number of
production steps, the presence of intermediate storage, and
the divergent materials ¯ow in PI enable postponing the
scheduling activities, and should be designed in such a way
that each decision leaves maximum ¯exibility to the
following scheduling decisions.8 Virtual design and produc-
tion can be utilised in PI to eliminate any production losses
and minimises the overall risk involved in any change
process. This again encourages the application of CE in
the total design processes of PI.
A framework for the implementation of CE in process
industry
In PI, product life cycles are getting shorter, and the close
coupling of business and technology strategy has become
critical. For example, increase in market share may require
JIT as a technology strategy. Figure 3 explains the key
functional areas that should be integrated in the context of
whole organisation with the objective to improve the over-
all performance of PI. While designing the process, equip-
ment and plant, the elimination of non-value adding
activities in other functional areas such as production,
personnel, ®nance and accounting, marketing, purchasing
and distribution should be considered. The integration
between functional areas can be achieved by team work,
employee empowerment and open communication. Also, a
matrix type organisation will facilitate the co-operative
supported work among various functional areas.
Figure 3 Functional integration while designing the process,
equipment and installing the plant and operations.
The PI is becoming aware that they are automating to
control the process and not to control the business. The
system should look at co-ordinating all the data from a
process and product points of view to obtain an on-line
picture of what is taking place, such as the location of
inventory and the status of all materials and orders. Since
the design of new products demands the co-ordination of all
the data from a process and product points of view, to a
plant design and installation, inventory, and the status of all
materials and orders, the application of CE and the integra-
tion of all functional areas become evident. Nevertheless,
CE can certainly be used as an information system for
integrating the functional areas in PI.
The current trend in PI includes rapid prototyping and
advancement in technology and new materials, increased
creative product innovation, increase reliance on automa-
tion and increased complexity, performance and reliability
of products. A systemic framework for the implementation
of CE in PI has been discussed with the help of a
conceptual model as shown in Figure 4. The business
strategies are determined based on both the external and
internal factors to the PI, after which suitable operations
strategy is determined. Once the operations strategy is
formulated, then the decision about the process, raw mate-
rials and design of equipment and plant, and operational
policies are taken to deduce suitable process, plant and
operational aspects of PI. Nevertheless, various cost trade-
offs are to be considered while selecting the alternatives
together with product quality. The active participants in the
application of CE in PI are contractors, subcontractors,
technology providers, vendors, suppliers, regulation and
licensing and authorities. These participants should work
together to improve the development and operations of PI.
The principle of CE as illustrated in Figure 1 have been
applied to process industries as shown in Figure 4. It should
be noted that some of the main active participants in
PI include raw material suppliers, process equipment

Figure 4 A conceptual framework for the implementation of
CE in PI.
designers, plant contractors, distribution, and research and
development should interact with design and engineering
departments while designing the process and hence the
products. The reason why the process equipment manufac-
turer and plant contractor should interact at the early stage
of the process/product design is that they have an impor-
tant role to play on the performance of the various down-
stream opera-tions and hence the overall productivity and
quality of PI.
In order to understand the difference between the tradi-
tional method of sequential activities and CE in PI, an
attempt has been made to compare the models as shown in
Figures 2 and 4. In the traditional method, there is no direct
communication/interaction between the process equipment
designer and the chemical operating company. It may
happen that there are no suf®cient skills available to
operate the equipment designed without consulting the
infrastructure of the company both in terms of skills and
other support services available. This might lead to poor
performance of the equipment and operators which in turn
lead to lower productivity and poor quality. Furthermore,
lack of interaction between market consultants and distri-
bution will result in poor logistical supply chain which in
turn leads to higher inventory and distribution costs. In a
similar way, there are many other downstream activities
such as process planning and production that should be
considered while designing the process/product and hence
the process plant to eliminate any non-value adding activ-
ities in the downstream operations. But in the case of CE in
PI, it can easily be seen that the design and engineering
departments interact simultaneously with the rest of the
A GunasekaranÐConcurrent engineering 763
functional areas to design a process/product that will result
in reduced cost of production and higher quality products.
This will also help to eliminate non-value adding activities
at the downstream stages of operations due to poor design
of process/product, and plant without taking into account
various operational and technological characteristics of the
company. Overall, CE helps the PI to reduce the time to
reach market.
Suppose in a furniture making company, the chairs made
by wood has been ordered by customers, then the raw
material does not have much in¯uence on the production
system required. In the case of process industries, the ®nal
product can be obtained from different raw materials by
mixing/blending operations. Therefore, the type of raw
material selected requires a set of processes and hence
different machines/equipments required. This indicates that
the raw material required should be considered while
designing processes and in turn the suitable plant required
in PI with the objective to eliminate any operational and
quality problems at the downstream operations. As noted
earlier, different processes that are required in¯uence the
kind of plant required and in turn operational policies.
Therefore, it is important to involve the equipment and
manufacturer and the plant designer in the process/product
design to avoid any operational and quality problems at the
downstream activities.
The development of a process/product design, plant
design and installation in a CE environment requires
consideration of life cycle factors early in the design
process. The phases of the above design in a CE environ-
ment include: (i) design requirements, (ii) design functions,
(iii) design alternatives, (iv) design attributes, and (vi)
design environments.10 It demands that, as product design
decisions are made, they are immediately evaluated in terms
of functionality, producibility, packagability, maintainability
and recyclability. The advanced information technologies
and new managerial philosophies such as JIT and TQM
should be implemented to carry out their activities concur-
rently. This new approach to business would no doubt
result in increased ef®ciency, as measured by cost savings,
and increased effectiveness as measured by improvements
in quality, ¯exibility, and responsiveness. In CE, many
functions are performed concurrrently; however, produc-
tion logistics design is also to be considered. An integrated
methodology for the design of plant and product, manu-
facturing logistics and links it with early phases of process/
product design needs to be developed. In addition, Compu-
ter-Integrated Production (CIP) may offer potential bene®t
that includes signi®cant reductions in: scrap, order lead
times, late shipments to customers, inventory and inventory
shortages, personnel costs and overall manufacturing
costs.11
Engineering and construction companies in PI are using
their expertise in creating drawings with computers to add
new dimensions and become competitive with innovators
764 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 49, No. 7

of the computer design concepts. CE can be used as a
package of an integrated software system designed for the
automation of engineering, layout, construction, and opera-
tion of industrial facilities.12 The productivity of PI can be
enhanced by such uni®ed management strategies as plant
management system (PMS), manufacturing resource plan-
ning (MRP II), and Just-In-Time (JIT). PMS has the root
closet to chemical process industries.10 Also, CIP and PMS
meld process and business data that can be implemented on
many of the process controllers available today. MRP II is an
information system that allows a plant to deal with massive
quantitative data. This implies the application and potential
for CE in PI with a broad scope such as improving the
¯exibility and overall performance of PI by eliminating any
congestion in the organisation. The details of the application
of CE in PI are presented in Table 2.
Successful companies in PI recognise the importance of
involving customers and suppliers in the design and devel-
opment of products and services. When a sophisticated
product and process technologies are involved with produc-
tion, these relationships create a network of companies and
industries, each of which is a potential source for techno-
logical innovation.13,14 These authors have presented a
framework for understanding the evaluation of technological
innovation in ethylene manufacturing including the chan-
ging role of the equipment suppliers, the process plant
suppliers and the operating companies throughout this
evolution. The concept of CE has been embedded in their
framework. In PI, the equipment manufacturers play a signi-
®cant role in re®ning existing technology and improving
equipment reliability and its capabilities. Such efforts are
supported by the close co-operation with the operating com-
panies, which can contribute process knowledge that the
equipment manufacturers might otherwise lack. The PI
should focus on the value-added activities and eliminate all
non-value added activities through BPR that support the cus-
tomised products by recon®guring the products for different
purposes and reproduce a single product in various facilities.
Since the traditional production system is not ¯exible in
PI, there is a need to improve the ¯exibility of the system
by shorter production cycle and small batch production.
These warrant the application of MRP, JIT and CIM. The
product life cycles are collapsing and demands for custo-
mised products are growing. These require a ¯exible
production system in PI with help of ¯exible equipments,
plants and operational policies to facilitate the ¯exible
processing capabilities. In order to reduce inventory
levels and hence to improve the material ¯ow and ¯ex-
ibility in PI, some of the production characteristics of PI
should be brought to those of discrete manufacturing. For
example, one can use robots for cleaning/set-up operations
ion PI to reduce the set-up cost. This would help to reduce

Table 2 Characteristics of process industries vs application of CE

Characteristics Process industries Application of concurrent engineering

Raw materials Early consideration at the design stage
Process design Highly influence the design and installation
of the plant
Longer production cycle
Large batch production
Production Mixing/blending
High volume and low variety
Continuous material flow
Process/production equipment designer Special purpose equipments
Safety and environmental aspects Highly relevant at the design stage
Design and installation of plant Highly important
Supplier involvement, customer
requirements, collaborative tasks between
plant contractors and raw material suppliers
Design function deployment, collaborative
decision making, team-building, life cycle
design, computer simulation
Business process reengineering, JIT,
involvement of suppliers, automation such
as robots, supply chain management, use of
computer tools for planning and
programming, development of
infrastructure for the implementation of
computer-integrated production, group
technology in the design of production
cells, MRP, ZI, employee empowerment,
cross-functional team and total quality
management
CAD/CAM/CIP, supplier involvement,
multidisclipinary team, quality function
deployment, feature-based design and
production
Design and process control for
environment friendly, assess safety
measures and risks
Open communication, proactive
management, multidisclipinary team,
plant-contractor and supplier involvement
in the process/product design

the production batch size and cycle time in PI and hence an
improved ¯exibility of the plant to produce customised
products. Owing to the nature of the ¯exible production
system, the scheduling policies can also be ¯exible which
would further support the higher degree of freedom about
products and hence product ¯exibility for satisfying the
customer's requirements.
In order to improve ¯exibility in planning/scheduling,
new process and production control systems using the
application of CE are to be considered. These aspects are
signi®cant at the design stage of the process/product,
equipment and plant, together with various operational
policies. It may not be possible to solve all the problems
at the design stage, equal efforts should be made to develop
¯exibility within the production system with the help of
suitable infrastructure, organisational structure, team work
and empowerment, independent of the product design
features. For instance, the application of cellular production
system using Group Technology, use of robots in the set-up
operations, automated material handling system and
computerised production control system will improve ¯ex-
ibility in planning/scheduling, and process control in PI.
Also, some of the techniques used in discrete manufactur-
ing can also be used to develop a ¯exible production system
in PI. Knowledge-based system can be used to improve the
process, production and scheduling control in PI. Dynamic
simulations can be used to allow engineers to model how
plant-wide processes change during, start-ups and distur-
bances, as well as to link plant designs more closely to
processes. The process and factory-automation markets are
expected to be the primary growth area for practical
applications of arti®cial intelligence and neural network
developments during the 1990s.15
Summary and conclusions
In this paper, an attempt has been made to investigate the
application of CE in process industries. Firstly, the differ-
ences in the characteristics of discrete manufacturing and
process industries have been discussed. Secondly, the
problems of productivity and quality problems in process
industries are analysed. Thirdly, a framework has been
offered for the implementation of concurrent engineering
in process industries. The framework considers the equip-
ment and plant design, and installation while designing the
process/product. The implications of the framework is to
motivate the designers of process to treat the process as an
integrated activity considering the design of plant and plant
installation and operational control system. This would help
to eliminate the non-value adding activities in the supply
chain and improve ¯exibility of the production system in
PI. For example, set-up costs and smaller batch production
lead to a shorter cycle time which in turn enhances the
¯exibility of the system in PI, that is similar to manufactur-
ing. Furthermore, development of a knowledge-based
system for process control in PI becomes an important
A GunasekaranÐConcurrent engineering 765
aspect of the CE application in process/product design.
Therefore, there is a need to consider the process control
system while designing the equipment and plant design,
and installation. The number of intermediate storage in PI
can be reduced by the ¯exible production system. The main
objective of this paper has been to motivate and instigate
the researchers and practitioners to apply new manufactur-
ing concepts and technologies in process industries that has
generally been ignored in the past for improving the overall
performance of the industry.
AcknowledgementsÐThe author is most grateful to Professors Khairy
Kobbacy and Sunil Vadera, Guest Editors of this special issue and Dr.
Jan Fransoo (Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands) and two
anonymous referees for their extremely constructive and helpful comments
on the earlier version of the manuscript which helped to improve the
presentation of the paper considerably.
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Received January 1997;
accepted January 1998 after one revision