iDCSS: Integrating Workflow, Conflict and Rationale- Based Concurrent Engineering Coordination Technologies

Product development has increasingly become a cooperative endeavor that requires effective coordination in the face of highly complex inter-dependencies exposed by distribution over participants, time and perspectives. Distinct coordination support technologies have emerged for each of these kinds of distribution, but all face important limitations. This paper presents an integrated model of concurrent engineering coordination that synergistically combines existing coordination approaches in a way that avoids many of their individual limitations and combines their strengths. An initial implementation of this model is presented and challenges for future evolution of this technology are identified. work focuses on computer-based support for collaborative problem solving with human and machine-based agents. He has published over 25 papers in the areas of conflict management, design rationale capture and workflow management in concurrent engineering/concurrent engineering settings. Mark completed his Ph. a visiting researcher. His professional activities have included invited talks on three continents, chairing three international workshops and guest editing a special issue of CERA. Increasingly, complex artifacts are developed in large manufacturing concerns by complex processes distributed across time, participants and functional perspectives. The design of a commercial jet, for example, requires the integrated contribution of thousands of individuals spread over several continents and a span of decades. Effective coordination is critical to the success of this cooperative process since the distributed activities are typically highly interdependent e.g. due to shared resources, input-output relationships and so on. The sheer complexity of these inter-dependencies, however, has come to overwhelm traditional manual organizational schemes and paper-based coordination techniques, resulting in huge unnecessary rework costs, slowed schedules and reduced product quality. As a result, while individual productivity may be high, failures of existing coordination support practices and technologies have severe impacts on the bottom line. Cooperative product development is distributed across the three orthogonal axes of time, participants and perspectives, each addressed by distinct coordination support technology: • distribution across participants requires support for the sequencing of tasks and flow of information among participants; this is addressed by process management (i.e. workflow, planning/scheduling) technologies. • distribution across perspectives arises because the participants involved work on different interacting aspects of the design and/or have different often-incompatible goals; consistency among their design actions can be maintained with the support of conflict management (i.e. constraint or dependency management) technologies. • distribution across time arises because the nature and rationale for design decisions made at an earlier stage often need to be …