Delimiting design: expanding the limits of concurrency through set-based concurrent engineering

Abstract

Engineering design problems are often decomposed and distributed among design teams so that their components may be developed concurrently in a project. Set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE) details a development process that reduces the need for communication and rework, often considered limiting factors to concurrency, by maintaining many candidate designs for each subproblem throughout the design process. This ensures that candidates have some compatible options to combine with as the project progresses rather than needing constant coordination and adaptation. Previous studies of SBCE found positive results in industry and corroborated its claimed benefits with computational models but have yet to study how it interacts with problem decomposition. This work uses the Point/Set-Organised Research Teams (PSORT) platform, a computational model developed to simulate and study SBCE, to investigate how SBCE interacts with a problem decomposed to different degrees to understand its impact on the limits of concurrency. Problem decompositions are also formulated with varying amounts of coupling to further test the interactions of SBCE and concurrency in different situations. Simulations with PSORT find that SBCE becomes more beneficial as problem decomposition increases, suggesting that SBCE expands the limits of concurrency; however small teams may prefer not to use SBCE.