Using Set-Based Concurrent Engineering in Rolls-Royce: A Comprehensive Case Study

This article presents a transformation process towards lean product development in the aerospace industry. This transformation was achieved in two main stages: the first was to integrate the principles of set-based concurrent engineering into an existing product development model of an aerospace company. This stage included defining activities and associated tools. The second stage was to implement the developed model in a research-based industrial case study, a helicopter engine in this case. Three main outcomes were realised from this work. First, it presented an industrial case of lean transformation in product development, where the leanness of an existing model was enhanced by embedding set-based concurrent engineering principles. Second, the developed model was structured into a set of well-defined activities and associated tools that were previously scattered or redundant. Finally, the developed model was trialled in an industrial project of a helicopter engine, and tested to evaluate its value in enhancing the innovation level and reducing risk. The work presented in this article focused on early-stage system-level design, and future work will extend the implementation of set-based concurrent engineering to sub-system and component levels.

The increasingly competitive economic environment puts pressure on organisations to produce new products, which means products with higher quality, lower costs and shorter lead times. This is because organisational survival and long-term growth depend on the introduction and development of new products. For decades, researchers have focused on defining principles and practices to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of product development (PD). Among different PD approaches, lean PD was introduced in the early 1990s based on Toyota’s Product Development System, enabling it to become a world-leading car manufacturer (Womack et al., 1990). Since then, increasing research efforts have been directed towards defining and structuring lean PD as a general PD paradigm (Muffatto, 2009).

This article presents an industrial case study in which a conventional PD process in an aerospace company has the potential to be transformed into lean PD by implementing the principles of set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE).

The rest of this introductory section comprises a review of the state-of-the-art in lean PD and SBCE. Section ‘Research methodology’ presents the research methodology. Section ‘Developing the SBCE practices in the RRLeanPD model’ explains the activities of the new lean PD model and its associated tools. Section ‘Application of the RR-LeanPD model on a helicopter engine’ presents an industrial case study where the new model and its tools were implemented for a development project of a helicopter engine. In the section ‘Conclusion’, the new model is assessed in light of the case study results.