BACKGROUND There is an increasing awareness that 'time to market' is the key competitive issue in the manufacturing industry today. The global markets are demanding products that are well designed, are of high quality and are at low prices with ever decreasing lead times. Hence manufacturers are forced to utilize the best methods of technology with efficient control and management accompanied by suitably enabling organizational structures. Concurrent engineering (CE) is widely seen to be the methodology that can help satisfy these strenuous demands and keep the profitability and viability of...