Information Management for Concurrent Engineering: Research Issues

Abstract

The development of products in large industrial organizations involves numerous engineers from different disciplines working on interdependent components Objectives are sometimes in conflict The need for overall coordination, consistency, control, and integrity of data, design ideas, and design rationale is critical The information generated by each designer must be viewed in the context of information generated by other designers, the enterpnse historical data, and the organization as a whole. The paper outlines major requirements facing concurrent engineering (CE) It focuses on the ability of collaborating designers to proceed independently, correlate interdependency, use existing information (data, knowledge, and processes), and negotiate conflicts arising from design inconsistencies To provide information-based support for such environments a concept of design schemata is introduced to support the concurrent, collaborative, and historical aspects of CE environments from an enterprise perspective. The need for a data dictionary that supports these schemata and its different dimensions is also recognized The dictionary provides conceptual centralization of design information relative to the enterprise. This includes data, as well as its definition (meta-data), and must allow the design process to evolve in a global enterprise perspective These discussions lead to a series of research issues that must be addressed by the CE research community.