An integrated concurrent engineering environment for life cycle management

Abstract

Concurrent Engineering (CE) places certain requirements on integrated development environments. This article describes the Integrated Development Support Environment (IDSE), which was designed specifically to meet the demands of CE. The IDSE combines a powerful process management capability layered on top of a distributed integration platform that fully supports function and data integration and process model driven support for coordinating the product life cycle. Using a framework, or description of the product life cycle processes and resources involved in that life cycle, the process manager monitors progress, identifies tasks, and coordinates activities within a development process. The integration platform provides the enabling technology to tie together various software systems and to manage the progress of the product life cycle. The combination of the integration platform and process manager ensures that product evolution occurs as specified in the framework description. Because the framework provides a descriptive form of the design life cycle process, this description can be changed to adapt to an evolving management philosophy. Thus, the framework allows an enterprise integration strategy to evolve as the organization's concurrent engineering strategy evolves. The system described in this article is being implemented in the ARPA RAPIDCIM project and at the Air Force Logistics Center at Oklahoma City.