Collaborative curriculum design fosters graduates' communication skills

Concurrent engineering is a relatively new approach to project management, and as opposed to a sequential process, uses overlapping design stages with fewer 'gates', and cross-functional teams to shorten the development time of a project. The major advantage is that a number of critical issues concerned with product development can be looked at and dealt with simultaneously at the early stages of the design development; so that any immediate and future requirements can be taken into account. It is argued that concurrent engineering fosters collaboration, communication and mutual appreciation and understanding between various team members from different disciplines; as it breaks down the boundaries between various disciplines by utilising cross-functional teams, consisting of key personnel from various functions. Effective communication is essential for successful implementation of concurrent engineering, as it fosters integration between departments, and this will in turn lead to successful new product development. The collaborative project described below in many ways parallels and reinforces the principles of concurrent engineering.