Concurrent Engineering: A Schedule Reduction Tool

A literature review was conducted to identify a number of schedule improvement tools and to determine their benefits, success factors, and implementation barriers. Selection was based on finding tools that lead to the reduction of project delivery time without increasing project overall cost. Concurrent engineering (CE) was identified as a schedule reduction tool (SRT) that met the selection criteria. This study documented successful applications of CE, verified its potential for schedule reduction, and determined its success factors and implementation barriers. The data collected suggested that implementation of CE has the potential of reducing project delivery time by up to 25%, compared to historical data. Success factors, implementation barriers, and lessons learned were found to be related to management, employee, and process issues. These issues were further ranked according to their apparent significance and impact on successful implementation. Such ranking could assist present and future users in obtaining the maximum benefits from their CE efforts.