Control and Monitoring of Concurrent Design Tasks in a Dynamic Environment

In product development, it is common for concurrent design tasks to be coupled, and, because of complex information flows, to iterate several times before the entire product development process is completed, leading to delays in product launches and cost overruns. Furthermore, unexpected disturbances may destabilize the entire product development process. A generalized homogeneous and non-homogeneous state-space concept is proposed to model concurrent, coupled design tasks and to analyze and control the stability and convergence rate of the design tasks. The homogeneous analysis predicts the number of design iterations before the design tasks are completed and identifies those tasks that consume a disproportionate amount of resources and time to complete. The non-homogeneous analysis precisely monitors and controls the stability and the convergence rate of the concurrent design tasks through state feedback control. A case study of a camera design is discussed to illustrate how the convergence rate of the tasks can be improved and initial instability of tasks is managed. The proposed methodology can facilitate workload distribution and resource allocation in design task planning and management in the face of unexpected disturbances.