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A multi‐component design of a “concurrent team” is described here for a concurrent engineering organization. This concurrent “team design” is composed of four essential teaming components: a logical component, a virtual component, a technological component and a personnel (work‐group or humane) component. The description is based on an implementation of a “concurrent team” environment for product development at Delphi Divisions of General Motors. The paper first describes how to configure a “concurrent team” organization that provides a decentralized cooperation during an integrated product development (IPD) process. The paper then shows how, with strategic design of a “concurrent team,” an organization can achieve optimum teamwork productivity during an IPD. As it has been observed during a number of automotive projects that the teamwork productivity of a concurrent engineering organization is largely influenced by the design of such “concurrent teams” as well as by elements of decentralized cooperation, the paper, also describes four key elements of decentralized cooperation that have been found useful with IPD clients.

The optimal material microstructures in pure material design are no longer efficient or optimal when accounting macroscopic structure performance with specific boundary conditions. Therefore, it is important to provide a novel multiscale topology optimization framework to tailor the topology of structure and the material to achieve specific applications. In comparison with porous materials, composites consisting of two or more phase materials are more attractive and advantageous from the perspective of engineering application. This paper aims to provide a novel concurrent topological design of structures and microscopic materials for thermal conductivity involving multi-material topology optimization (material distribution) at the lower scale.

In this work, the effective thermal conductivity properties of microscopic three or more phase materials are obtained via homogenization theory, which serves as a bridge of the macrostructure and the periodic material microstructures. The optimization problem, including the topological design of macrostructures and inverse homogenization of microscopic materials, are solved by bi-directional evolutionary structure optimization method.

As a result, the presented framework shows high stability during the optimization process and requires little iterations for convergence. A number of interesting and valid macrostructures and material microstructures are obtained in terms of optimal thermal conductive path, which verify the effectiveness of the proposed mutliscale topology optimization method. Numerical examples adequately consider effects of initial guesses of the representative unit cell and of the volume constraints of adopted base materials at the microscopic scale on the final design. The resultant structures at both the scales with clear and distinctive boundary between different phases, making the manufacturing straightforward.

This paper presents a novel multiscale concurrent topology optimization method for structures and the underlying multi-phase materials for thermal conductivity. The authors have carried out the concurrent multi-phase topology optimization for both 2D and 3D cases, which makes this work distinguished from existing references. In addition, some interesting and efficient multi-phase material microstructures and macrostructures have been obtained in terms of optimal thermal conductive path.

Concurrent engineering can help manufacturing enterprises to achieve shorter time to market, reduced development costs, and high‐quality products. In order to realize the concurrent engineering, a lot of integrations are required according to parallel development technique, such as the integration of the people with different disciplines, the integration of the software of design methods and design data, and so on. This paper discusses the integration of the software of existing design methods for concurrent engineering by using axiomatic design. The results show that a very complicated software system for concurrent engineering becomes simple and consists of 26 modules corresponding to 26 design methods and one main module which contains all the junctional properties at each level. The task of the programmer for the integration becomes clear and is mainly programming for the main module.

Summarizes the most important principles of concurrent engineering [CE] and computer integrated manufacturing [CIM]. Discusses system data flow and IDEFo diagrams used as graphical descriptions of the engineering process. Introduces a software package called CIMpgr. Concludes that CIM addresses the total information requirements and management of a company from the development of a business plan through to the shipment of a product and the follow‐up support.

Multiple attribute decision making (MADM) is a conceptual agenda used for evaluation and selection of optimal nanofluid to assure best performance of heat exchanger. Most of the studies focus on nanofluids focus on individual ability at one time. Relatively, not even a single study is available for selection of nanofluid for heat exchanger using concurrent design and MADM approach. The purpose of this paper is to propose a concurrent design methodology using MADM approach to assist improved design of heat exchanger concurrently for all the x-abilities in an integrated manner.

A combined methodology of applying MADM approach using concurrent design for x-abilities is called CE-MADM approach. Implementation of nanofluid to improve thermal performance of heat exchanger entails thorough evaluation of nanofluids in various x-abilities (performance, maintenance, thermophysical properties and modelisation) to make exhaustive management decision. Sensitivity analysis is also proposed to study the behaviour of height of variation of density, heat capacity, thermal expansion and thermal conductivity with varying particle volume fraction and variation of relative closeness of available alternates from ideally best possible solution.

MADM approach considering various x-abilities concurrently provide an approach for relative ranking of available nanofluids for optimum performance. Fishbone diagrams of all x-abilities are constructed to identify all the attributes and converge large number of attributes into single numerical index that are concurrently responsible for the cause thus saving time for easy evaluation, comparison and ranking by decision makers. Sensitivity analysis to demonstration height of variation of pertinent attributes with varying particle volume fraction. A MATLAB programming is established to execute calculations involved in the procedure.

This paper comprises a predictable and effective mathematical approach to improve design of heat exchanger with nanofluid bearing in mind all the required x-abilities concurrently. This combined approach of CE-MADM is never applied before in the field of nanofluid to predict best possible results in feasible conditions considering all the x-abilities. Sensitivity analysis is also presented from the assumed mathematical equations of thermophysical properties.

The purpose of this article is to determine the uses of mixed method research designs published in major marketing journals.

This study involved a content analysis of 2,166 articles published between 2003 and 2009 in nine prominent marketing journals.

A total of 34 mixed method studies implemented data‐collection procedures sequentially (79 percent), eight implemented them concurrently (19 percent) and one combined both sequential and concurrent procedures (2 percent). On the whole, priority was skewed more toward quantitative strands, with 27 articles prioritizing quantitative data (63 percent), three articles prioritizing qualitative data (7 percent), and 13 articles prioritizing both equally (30 percent).

It is clear that marketing scholars recognize the benefit of mixing qualitative and quantitative research; however, as a discipline we are not demonstrating knowledge of the mixed method literature or procedures, as only one article recognized or mentioned knowledge of mixed method procedures or cited mixed method research.

This study provides guidance for researchers in identifying design types appropriate for various rationales or research objectives and models of different design types that have been published in marketing journals. In addition, implications for designing mixed methods studies in marketing include highlighting the need for scholars to specifically address issues such as the timing and priority given to each data type (i.e. sequential or concurrent), and the integration (or mixing) of the both data types.

Until now, the role of mixed methods designs in marketing has not been the subject of formal examination. The delineation of the major forms in mixed method designs provides a framework for looking at such design types, which helps to provide more credibility to the field of marketing by providing examples of research designs that are substantially different than single strand studies.

The goal of concurrent or simultaneous engineering is to move a product concept based on a market need to a manufactured and marketable product in the shortest possible time and with minimum cost. The concurrent engineering approaches, processes, and systems should find increasing practical applications in the coming years. Several recent technological advances should help expedite this process.

One way in which the manufacturing and construction industries are moving is to adopt the philosophy of concurrent engineering (CE), better utilising the expertise of other companies in the supply chain. This paper draws on the results of several previous studies to discuss from a conceptual rather than an empiric point of view some ergonomics issues involved in CE from the perspective of supply chains. It outlines some generic attributes, and discusses some concepts of federated control systems within supply chains. The implications of these for information flows and the management of distributed knowledge within supply chains are then discussed. A key issue that arises from this is the need for trust in individuals external to the company if the CE philosophy is to work effectively. The paper then discusses the implications of this for the design of roles within the CE workgroup, concluding that the principles of socio‐technical design for roles are appropriate for the design of these roles, ensuring that they have the right attributes for trustworthiness. This provides a link between these principles and business needs that is not often present in discussions of role design. Examples are drawn mainly from manufacturing and the implications for construction supply chains highlighted, as appropriate.

Companies needing to establish competitive advantage must ensure their products are brought to market quickly, with the quality features sought by potential customers. Concurrent Engineering techniques can reduce time scales, but quality issues are more difficult, as customers’ needs are not readily available to the project team throughout the design process, so design effort may focus on satisfying a functional specification, imperfectly translated from customer requirements, rather than on satisfying the real customer needs as perceived in the market. The research reported here demonstrates how a Concurrent Engineering environment and Quality Function Deployment techniques can be brought together to provide an extended design team with valuable, shared information throughout the design process.

Existing studies on human activity recognition using inertial sensors mainly discuss single activities. However, human activities are rather concurrent. A person could be walking while brushing their teeth or lying while making a call. The purpose of this paper is to explore an effective way to recognize concurrent activities.

Concurrent activities usually involve behaviors from different parts of the body, which are mainly dominated by the lower limbs and upper body. For this reason, a hierarchical method based on artificial neural networks (ANNs) is proposed to classify them. At the lower level, the state of the lower limbs to which a concurrent activity belongs is firstly recognized by means of one ANN using simple features. Then, the upper-level systems further distinguish between the upper limb movements and infer specific concurrent activity using features processed by the principle component analysis.

An experiment is conducted to collect realistic data from five sensor nodes placed on subjects’ wrist, arm, thigh, ankle and chest. Experimental results indicate that the proposed hierarchical method can distinguish between 14 concurrent activities with a high classification rate of 92.6 per cent, which significantly outperforms the single-level recognition method.

In the future, the research may play an important role in many ways such as daily behavior monitoring, smart assisted living, postoperative rehabilitation and eldercare support.

To provide more accurate information on people’s behaviors, human concurrent activities are discussed and effectively recognized by using a hierarchical method.