Hierarchical Concurrent Engineering: Supporting Hierarchical Decomposition and Peer-to-Peer Problem Solving

One primary task of engineering design is resolution of the conflicting objectives that are inherent in the design process. This problem is even more difficult when members of a design team, who each have different perspectives, must resolve these conflicts. We present a decision theoretic approach for resolving conflicting objectives during the design process, and discuss an extension to this approach that addresses coordination of hierarchical design organizations. Hierarchical design organizations arise from traditional hierarchical system decomposition, subcontracting, and supervisor/subordinate relationships. We believe the methods presented in this paper are general, and thus will provide benefits not only to concurrent engineering, but other domains as well. 1.0 Introduction One primary task of engineering design is resolution of the conflicting objectives that are inherent in the design process. These conflicts arise due to the physical relations among objectives and resource limitations. Formal models of preferences (Thurston, 1991; Sykes and White, 1991) have shown promise in resolving conflicting design objectives. A formal model, e.g., a value (utility) function, in contrast to ad hoc techniques, provides a well-defined basis for predicting the quality of the results achieved. This property is highly desirable, since many engineeringdesign problems are so large that the desirability of the solution produced is difficult, if not impossible, to determine.