A Risk-based Global Coordination System in a Distributed Product Development Environment for Collaborative Design, Part I, Framework

Abstract

This is the first of a two-part paper introducing a risk-based global coordination system in a distributed environment for collaborative design. Part I presents the basic concepts and a theoretical framework, and Part II describes the implementation and practical application to a National Science Foundation supported collaborative network. In a distributed environment, local negotiations within a stakeholder group (intra-stakeholder) and global negotiations among stakeholders (inter-stakeholder) co-exist. Strategic support is necessary to facilitate the integrative negotiation at the both intra- and inter- levels for effective distributed decision making. The challenge is that the distributed stakeholders have different subjective risk perceptions, interpretations and evaluations, which can be inconsistent and incoherent from a global perspective, and thus create considerable barriers for effective negotiation and coordination. Our approach is to (1) understand and capture heterogeneous risk evaluations at intra- and inter-levels, (2) represent and quantify all participants' subjective risk evaluations using a uniform structure, and (3) facilitate the negotiations through a risk-based coordination mechanism designed to achieve a globally consistent risk assessment (building consensus). The long-term goal of this work is to achieve a more fundamental understanding and develop useful tools for effective collaborative design.