Conflict detection and resolution in distributed design

Abstract

As an increasingly common feature, design of today's complex products and services utilizes distributed collaborative processes. A key factor in the effectiveness of the design processes is conflict management, since conflicts result mainly from designer interaction. Effective support of the design process needs new approaches, from input of specifications to generation of the design documents. These new approaches need to support functions to identify, avoid, and solve conflicts throughout the design process. The research presented in this paper describes a particular approach to conflict detection and resolution in collaborative design processes. The solution proposed lies within the guidelines of e-Work established at the PRISM research group at Purdue University, in that of providing both autonomous agents and active protocols for the distributed design process. The developed Conflict Detection and Management System (CDMS) allows testing for conflict detection and resolution by providing a collaboration interface for the distributed designers. CDMS implements straightforward methods on an Intranet of personal computers platform for detecting and solving the conflicts that otherwise would result in a longer design process. The system also implements a simple learning mechanism for selecting components to include in the design. Experiments performed with CDMS show that product complexity and number of participating designers have a statistically significant effect on the ratio of conflicts solved to conflicts detected, however, only product complexity has a statistically significant effect on design duration.