Case-based conceptual design information server for concurrent engineering

Abstract

Conceptual design requires processing information from diverse sources in order to define the functional requirements, operating constraints, and evaluation criteria pertinent to accomplishing a prescribed goal. Historically, the design process focused on the functionality of an artifact for the end customer. Concurrent engineering broadens this focus to account for the concerns of ‘customers’ not previously considered — those along the entire life cycle of an artifact, i.e. marketing, design, manufacture, distribution, operation and disposal. Expanding the design focus to include all of these customers places far greater informational demands on the designer. Case-based reasoning applies experience stored in a computerized form to solving similar problems in slightly altered contexts. It has been applied successfully to routine design where both the form and the content of design information can be encoded symbolically and manipulated using artificial intelligence techniques. Concurrent conceptual design presents unique problems for such an approach because design information must be considered at many levels of abstraction and from many viewpoints. We describe an approach that provides the designer with case-based conceptual design information stored in the richly expressive medium of hypermedia (hypertext incorporating multimedia). Design cases of industry ‘best practices’ in concurrent engineering are indexed to provide access through multiple interfaces, allowing the user to browse, explore, or pinpoint design case information. The Conceptual Design Information Server (CDIS) is implemented using emerging internet standards, such as those associated with the World Wide Web (WWW) and Wide Area Information Service (WAIS), coupled to a robust Structured Query Language (SQL) database and traditional cad packages.