Management of Uncertain Information in Simultaneous Engineering

Abstract

The basic idea of Simultaneous Engineering is to parallelize activities in order to reduce the development lead time and thus the time to market. The processing of incomplete and uncertain information can achieve an enormous advantage in comparison to parallelization of activities based on exact information alone. Thus many activities can be started even if its predecessor is not completed. This article focuses mainly on two concepts to provide adequate information management for Simultaneous Engineering. The first concept bases on a systematic integration of uncertainty in the information flow. The second concept allows the break-up of the sequential and document-oriented information flow by creating small information units as needed. The application of both concepts supports an early information flow. Thus it becomes possible to coordinate activities more efficiently because critical topics can be recognized and balanced in advance, shifting the communication requirement to the early stages of the development process. Hence, expensive iterations, especially in the late stages of the product development process, can be avoided and the length of the iteration loop can be reduced.KeywordsLinguistic VariableSearch AreaProduct Development ProcessUncertain InformationInformation UnitThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.