Challenges of CE

Despite a long pedigree and many positive reports on its use and benefits, concurrent engineering (CE) and its associated research (sub)domains still experience significant development. In this final chapter, a socio-technical framework is applied to classify and analyze challenges identified as part of the foundations, methods and applications discussed in this book. Existing properties and means of CE are abstracted. Subsequently, the main trends and developments in CE research and practice are discussed, followed by expectations for the future. Findings and trends have been identified for strategic issues visible in product requirements and product portfolios, stakeholders including companies involved, multiple functions and disciplines, current and future technologies that are expected to solve at least some of the existing problems, knowledge and skills as brought by people and teams, and structures necessary for making collaboration work, while dealing also with the still very difficult cultural differences. As the chapter shows, CE as a concept is very much alive, requiring even more advanced tools, techniques and methods to contribute to less waste in resources and efforts world-wide and improve quality.