International Journal of Project Management 21 (2003) 425–431

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman

A self-assessment tool for implementing concurrent engineering

through change management
Matthew Ainscough, Kevin Neailey, Charles Tennant*
Warwick Manufacturing Group, School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

Received 19 December 2001; received in revised form 20 September 2002; accepted 19 November 2002

Abstract
A review of various tools for assisting organisations to implement Concurrent Engineering (CE) found they tend to operate
independently from each other, rather than being integrated to rigorously manage the change towards effective assessment and
deployment. A new workbook style tool is proposed, which is based on a self-assessment model to enable the implementation of CE
through a change management strategy. The combination of self-assessment and change management enables the simultaneous
measurement and deployment of practices, which can assist organisations in the project management of product development, and
lead to the identification of further improvements to rigorously manage the transition to CE. The new tool described was imple-
mented at London Taxis International (a large sized UK based automotive company) and led to the creation of a formalised new
product introduction process, implementation of a project management system, and enhanced teamworking at the company.
# 2003 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.
Keywords: New product introduction; Self-assessment; Change management; Concurrent engineering; Product development; Project management

1. Introduction project management of product development, to enable

An effective New Product Introduction (NPI) process,
which is concurrent, can enhance an organisation’s
competitiveness by compressing product development
lead-times, and enabling upstream and downstream
processes to be considered when taking decisions at the
product concept phase [1,2]. This approach is typically
described as Concurrent Engineering (CE) and is
described by Carter and Baker as ‘the systematic
approach to the integrated, concurrent design of products
and their related processes, including manufacture and
support’ [3]. Therefore, CE represents an organisation’s
ability to carry out product development as a series of
overlapping phases, which delivers product on time, to
provide customer satisfaction at the right price [4]. To
achieve this requires a ‘right-first-time’ approach by
applying numerous tools and techniques during the
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: charles.tennant@warwick.ac.uk (C. Tennant).
0263-7863/03/$30.00 # 2003 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0263-7863(02)00081-9
effective decision-making [5,6]. Whilst the business ben-
efits of CE are well understood, a recent survey of UK
industry concluded that although its implementation
within certain sectors such as power generation, petro-
chemical and aerospace was claimed to be at a high
level, other sectors such as automobile and machinery
reported relatively low levels [7]. This is supported by
Viness, Chidolue and Medhat who concluded that 50%
of large UK companies were not fully mature in the
deployment of CE [8]. The reasons for this were thought
to be due to poor management of the change process,
rather than a lack of motivation to manage change.
Furthermore, Stickland suggests that ‘70% of all com-
panies who embark upon a business process re-engineering
program will fail’ [9]. Kotter states that companies often
struggle to manage change, because they do not take a
process based approach. Instead they look for short cuts
by expecting individuals to execute new working prac-
tices without training or any awareness of its need [10].
Therefore this suggests that the low take up of CE
within UK industry is due primarily to companies not
knowing how CE should be deployed within the
organisation through the management of change.
426 M. Ainscough et al. / International Journal of Project Management 21 (2003) 425–431
2. Research objectives
The main theme underpinning this research was to
investigate: ‘‘How can UK industry be more effective at
leveraging concurrent engineering practices within their
organisations?’’ The research objectives were subsequently
defined as follows:
 To develop a system, which will enable the
implementation of CE practices.
 To verify that the system is effective by applying
it within a UK organisation.
3. Comparison of approaches for enabling change
To identify the requirements for a new tool, which
could enable UK industry to manage change toward
CE, eight approaches for managing change were identi-
fied as: Self-assessment, Benchmarking, SWOT analysis,
Auditing, Kaizen, Policy Deployment, Project Manage-
ment and Control, and Workbook Implementation
Methods. To assess the perceived effectiveness of the
eight approaches they were reviewed against six criteria
defined based upon a previous survey that identified a
number of common barriers to implementing CE. The
criteria were: knowledge of CE, measure current and
identify future states, provide a scoring system, easy to
apply, involves everyone, identifies key phases for
change [11]. This identified that there is no single
approach for enabling change that addresses all the cri-
teria defined for effective change management. How-
ever, any two of Self-assessment, Auditing or
Workbook Implementation Methods will do. Auditing
was discounted as it is problematic and fosters a ‘pass
the audit’ mentality—rather than encouraging a culture
of process improvement and organisational learning.
Therefore, it was decided that the development of an
integrated approach combining both Self-assessment
and an Implementation Workbook would be the opti-
mum combination for organisations to manage the
change towards CE, by simultaneously measuring and
implementing the required practices.
4. Self-assessment and workbook methods
4.1. Self-assessment methods
Self-assessment has been popularised by various high
profile National Quality Awards such as the ‘Deming
Prize’, the ‘Malcolm Baldridge National Quality
Award—MBNQA’, and the ‘European Foundation for
Quality Management—EFQM’ [12]. Self-assessment
systems have also emerged for measuring the
deployment of CE, and identifying areas for improve-
ment. Five different self-assessment tools for CE were
found, which aim to either assess CE or the innovation
process: Successful Product Development [13], Time to
Market Association [14], A Technical Innovation Audit
[15], Readiness for Concurrent Engineering [16], and
Mentor Graphics Self-Assessment Tool [3]. In all cases
they aim to measure an organisation’s current state
against a model of practice, and provide a means to
identify future improvements. A review of these CE self-
assessment tools concluded the following:
 They measure ‘where are we now?’ and ‘where do
we want to be?’ However, they do not provide an
aid for facilitating implementation. This provides
an opportunity to develop a tool, which assesses
and deploys good CE practice.
 They all assume one model for all organisations
and do not provide an opportunity tailor the
model for an organisation’s specific circum-
stances.
 They do not pay enough attention to the appli-
cation of CE from the perspective of achieving
specific design philosophies, such as design for
manufacture, service, reliability, customer
requirements and cost.
 They do not place enough emphasis upon per-
formance measures as a means to ascertain
whether improvements are delivering to the
bottom line.
4.2. Workbook Implementation Methods
Two Workbook Implementation Methods have been
designed specifically for implementing CE through
using a project management and control related
approach. These are ‘Using Concurrent Engineering for
Better Product Development’ (Cranfield approach) and
‘A Practical Approach to Concurrent Engineering’
(PACE) [17,18]. The Cranfield approach consists of
three phases: prepare, implement, and extend; and only
uses a pilot approach as a means for deploying practice
before company wide implementation. Furthermore, it
is targeted toward first time users rather than organisa-
tions that are relatively mature in its application and are
looking for areas that require improvements. PACE on
the other hand, has seven phases: develop a strategy,
assessment, create the culture, prioritise improvements,
plan the change, implement improved situation, and
support implementation. However, PACE prescribes a
generic implementation process that has not been tested
within an industrial context.
 M. Ainscough et al. / International Journal of Project Management 21 (2003) 425–431
5. A new tool for implementing CE through change
management
5.1. Requirements
The research justified the requirement for a new tool
based on a self-assessment system integrated with an
implementation process through change management to
enable UK based companies to deploy CE. Therefore, a
self-assessment system integrated with a change man-
agement methodology was created incorporating some
new tools/techniques developed in this research. The
application of the tool is described under four main
stages.
5.2. Stage 1—where are we now?
A self-assessment model was developed to provide an
organisation with the opportunity to assess its perfor-
mance and practice against specific industry sectors
within UK industry. Fig. 1 shows that six main practice
components of CE are assessed along with a set of
implementation methods and techniques that should
enable the achievement of improved performance
outputs such as quality, cost, and time.
The model is structured as a hierarchy where each
component is broken down into a set of criteria which
further breakdown down into a list of ‘requirements for
consistency’ to ensure a robust assessment of each cri-
terion. The assessment model can be tailored to take
into consideration an organisation’s specific industry
requirements and priorities. Fig. 2 presents the tailoring
process developed, which demonstrates that to tailor the
model, the company’s strategy; its market requirements
Fig. 1. Concurrent engineering self-assessment model.
427
and prioritised design philosophies required to meet the
strategy and requirements need to be understood. Spe-
cific criteria grouped under design philosophies for
achieving CE can then be selected from the model to
represent the organisations requirements. This approach
was based upon principles defined by Porter [19].
To assess the current state of CE within a company, it
is necessary to score the organisation against the
assessment model criteria and requirements for con-
sistency for each component. This was based on the
assessment method used by the EFQM framework [12].
A score of zero, one, two or three has to be allocated
which represents a situation where none, less than half,
more than half or all the requirements for consistency
for that criterion is found within the organisation. To
establish an overall benchmark for each component, the
score allocated to each criterion is summed to provide a
maximum score of one hundred and is represented on a
spider diagram for all components against the desired
maturity scale. This allows the collation of a strengths
and opportunities report, a current benchmark state,
and a maturity level; which are then communicated to
senior management who should then appoint a guiding
coalition—or senior level champion within the company.
5.3. Stage 2—where do we want to be?
To establish a future desired state it is necessary to
understand whether the components of CE and embed-
ded practices are relevant to the organisation. This
requires a model of desired practice to be built which
will provide the required competitive advantage. To
undertake this process criteria which impact
quality, cost, and time for each of the six components of
428 M. Ainscough et al. / International Journal of Project Management 21 (2003) 425–431

the self-assessment model were developed from the lit-
erature. This helps to gain and understanding of the
priority performance measures, and selecting the rele-
vant design philosophies for impacting those measures.
Finally, the desired state prescribed has to be translated
into a future state benchmark profile representing where
the company wants to be.
5.4. Stage 3—plan for implementation
Once a current and a future state have been defined, it
necessary to plan how the company should move from
one operational state to another. The system embodies a
number of planning tools, where in addition to standard
planning tools selected from the literature, two addi-
tional tools have been developed. An ‘Implementation
Strategy Tool’ was developed which assists the organi-
sation to select whether it wants to take a pilot, radical
or a gradual (incremental) approach to change as shown
in Fig. 3. The main deciding factors are the sense of
urgency for the requirement of CE and uncertainty
about whether it will be successfully deployed.
To assist with defining the implementation plan a
‘Generic Planning and Guidance Tool’ was developed

Fig. 2. Tailoring process.

Fig. 3. Implementation strategy tool.

 M. Ainscough et al. / International Journal of Project Management 21 (2003) 425–431
as illustrated by Fig. 4 which defines the main activities
required to implement and mature each CE component
depending upon the organisations current level of
maturity.
5.5. Stage 4—deployment
To assist in the deployment of practices, a number of
tools were selected from the literature. The selection
process is aimed at identifying tools, which support the
definition and deployment of practices such as an NPI
process and teamwork. Nevertheless, they are not com-
prehensive and additional tools can be included if
required by the user.
6. Testing the new approach through a case study
To test whether the new tool was effective at enabling
change toward CE, a case study was carried out at
London Taxis International (LTI); a large sized auto-
mobile manufacturer, based in Coventry, UK [20]. The
aim was to establish whether the implementation pro-
cess and tools were successful at enabling change, and
whether the practices specified impacted project perfor-
mance. Initially the self-assessment model and tailoring
process were applied as first introduced in Figs. 1 and 2,
which established that the company strategy was to be a
‘first mover with a cost focus’ strategy, and the market
requirements were ‘improved quality at lower costs’.
Fig. 4. Generic planning and guidance tool.
429
This led to a selection of product development philoso-
phies including parallel NPI activities and design for:
manufacture, serviceability, reliability, customer
requirements, and cost. Furthermore, the self-assess-
ment model as introduced in Fig. 1 was also applied to
establish the current state. Some difficulties were
encountered during the application of the self-assess-
ment process partly because normally a prerequisite to
effective self-assessment is the adoption of an appro-
priate model or framework, which the MBNQA and
EFQM provide for company wide holistic self-assess-
ment. But this had not been previously established at
LTI. Therefore, the authors’ had to convince the man-
agement team of the principle that the main focus of
self-assessment is continuous improvement through
organisational learning, which the more conventional
(and accepted) audit and review approach does not
facilitate. The hypothesis that traditional project review
approaches are inadequate, and that self-assessment is a
preferable alternative had to be—and was—bought into
by the management team. In the authors’ experience of
applying self-assessment at companies the management
buy-in process is essential, but is problematic due to the
commonly held misconception that it is a ‘soft’
approach primarily used in the adoption of EFQM type
quality models (and awards). The subsequent self-
assessment at LTI confirmed that the company’s current
best achievement was against teamwork, and that it was
only at an ‘early developer’ stage for the other areas of
formal NPI process, information technology, tools and
430 M. Ainscough et al. / International Journal of Project Management 21 (2003) 425–431
techniques, supply chain management, and project
management. It also failed to meet a number of perfor-
mance indicators relating to quality, cost and time. A
benchmark profile was captured on a spider diagram
representing LTI’s current and future state. A pilot fol-
lowed by a radical approach to implementation was
identified for LTI using the implementation strategy
tool as illustrated in Fig. 3. This was due to a state of
high urgency resulting from the threat of new competi-
tion and uncertainty as a result of a high resistance to
change and low levels of knowledge and familiarity of
CE at the company. The implementation plan was
developed using the Generic Planning and Guidance
Tool as illustrated in Fig. 4 and incorporated a number
of future objectives for improvement, which addressed
three of the ‘early developer’ areas and aimed to build
on the main strength of teamwork. These included:
 A formal NPI process with phases of product
development, project reviews with checklists,
concurrency and tier level definition of activities
using process mapping tools.
 Teamworking improvements by building con-
current working into the NPI process to further
enhance cross-functional problem solving as a
means to enable concurrency between processes,
and design: for manufacture, to cost, for servi-
ceability, for customer requirements, and relia-
bility.
 A project management system built into the NPI
process to guide the definition and implemen-
tation of an overall programme plan and work
package plans using historical data, risk man-
agement tools and processes and a project de-
brief as a means to control and learn from pro-
jects.
London Taxis International have applied—and
therefore tested—the above on two product pro-
grammes and have achieved improvements to cost,
quality, and lead-time. A company-wide implemen-
tation plan is currently being implemented, which also
addresses further areas such as information technology
and supply chain management.
7. Conclusions
The main theme of this research was to explore the
question: ‘‘How can UK industry be more effective at
leveraging concurrent engineering practices within their
organisations?’’ A review of existing tools to enable
change concluded that any two of self-assessment,
auditing or workbook implementation methods address
all the criteria defined for effective change management.
Therefore, it was concluded that the development of an
integrated approach combining both self-assessment
and an implementation workbook could enable organi-
sations to manage the change towards CE by encoura-
ging a culture of process improvement and
organisational learning. Some new tools were developed
in the research: an Assessment Model, an Implemen-
tation Strategy Tool, and a Generic Planning and Gui-
dance tool. Furthermore, the process was designed to
provide a means by which to tailor the self-assessment
model to suit an organisations specific industry needs.
The new tool was validated at London Taxis Interna-
tional on two product programmes to create a for-
malised new product introduction process, implement a
project management system, and enhance teamworking.
A company-wide implementation plan is currently being
implemented, to improve the remaining areas of weakness
with their current approach.
Acknowledgements
This work was undertaken as part of an EPSRC
sponsored Engineering Doctorate (EngD) Programme
at the University of Warwick.
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