J. ENG. DESIGN, 2000, VOL. 11, NO. 2, 103-U9 A concurrent function deployment technique for a workgroup .. based engineering design process BIREN PRASADt In this paper, an alternate framework to quality function (QFD) called concurrent function deployment (CPD), suitable for a workgroup-based engineering design process, is described. The methodology exploits the indepen- dence of units that manifest itself in a company strategic business unit, total quality management, and enterprise knowledge management concepts. It con- siders parallel deployments of a number of 'values' in addition to 'quality', as opposed to a serial four-phased deployment of quality. Consider, for example, the popular American Supplier Institute's (ASI's) four-phased QFD concept (Sμlli- van 1988). ASI's QFD is based on using a single measurement, 'quality', and the four phases called 'quality plans' are deployed serially. CFD employs a concur- rent deployment process of its 'value sets'-'quality' happens to be one of it'l important values. Six concurrent value-sets, namely functionality (quality), per- formance (X-ability), tools and technology (innovation), cost, responsiveness, and infrastructure (delivery) are considered in CFD, running in parallel rather than serially. In the present setting, Don Clausing's QFD process emerges as a special case of this CFD (Prasad 1998). CFD is more suited early on during a product design and development process-to deal with trade-offs among the crucial factors of artifact values. A set of three-dimensional value characteristic; matrices is employed in CFD to ensure that such trade-off goals are adequately addressed. 1. Introduction While manufacturing philosophies have changed drastically during the 1980s from mass to global manufacturing, the pace of such transitions from 'value manage- ment' perspectives has been very slow. Despite painful restructuring, reorganiz- ation, and even process re-engineering efforts, both the European and American automotive industries have at times failed to attain parity in product cost, produc- tivity, or throughput with Japanese producers and transplant operations (Wilson and Greaves 1990, Womack et al. 1990, Dika and Begley 1991, Liker et al. 1995). Earlier published work (King 1989) showed assurances that the competitive gaps could be closed using quality-based deployment techniques (such as quality function deploy- ment (QFD) (Clausing 1994), Taguchi's robust design (Taguchi and Clausing 1990), total quality management (TQM) (Hoftherr et al. 1994), etc.). This has motivated abandonment of many traditiona] functional values at first in favour of quality deployment. Many such combinations have been tried with QFD, along with product development teams (Prasad 1996), integrating with voice of the customer (Akao 1990; Griffin and Hauser 1991; Mizuno and Akao 1994), and with TOM Revision received November 1999. t Unigraphlcs Solutions, Knowledge-based Engineering (KBE), P.O. Box 3882, Tustin, CA 92782, USA. e-mail: Prasadb@ugsolutions.com Journal of Engineering Design ISSN 0954-4828 print/ISSN 1466-1837 online © 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.eo.uk/joumals I