In practice, many companies claim to be doing Concurrent Engineering if they manage to carry out some parts of the engineering process in parallel rather than in series. Others think they are doing Concurrent Engineering if they have set up teams, or have bought a Design For Manufacture program, or trained people in Quality Function Deployment. The common characteristic among these activities seems to be something to do with working on several processes at once. They are computer-based systems that manage the engineering data defining a company's products, and defining the processes used to define, manufacture and support products. The key words are 'computer', 'product', 'data', and 'process'.
Most engineering processes exist to create information or to communicate it to someone else.
A lot of information is created to describe processes. Deciding if the process needs to be addressed before the information is like trying to decide if the chicken comes before the egg. Most people have an underlying understanding of the concepts 'chicken' and 'egg', and the relationship between them, yet still find the chicken and egg question difficult to answer. Concurrent Engineering is not a computer system, and it is not based on a computer system. Concurrent Engineering is a philosophical approach to the way engineering should be carried out.