Principes et critères pour l'organisation d'activités coopératives de conception

Abstract

In this article, we propose a two-step method to analyse and to organise a cooperative design project. For this, the new recommendations of the ISO 9001/2000, ISO/FDIS (2000) are applied to identify the design project steps, the responsibilities and the interfaces inside a work organisation. The first step is based on research relative to the management of complex systems, Steward (1981) and Eppinger (1991). In these studies, the product design project is modelled by means of a DSM (Design Structure Matrix) which represents the inter-task dependencies. Then, by means of a partitioning process, the matrix is organised in order to optimise the exchanges between the actors involved in the design project. The objective of the partitioning process is to decompose the project into several work groups and to schedule their tasks. However, this decomposition method imposes no control on the size of the groups, i. e. the number of actors within a work group. Consequently, we define a second decomposition level in order to reorganise a group with too many participants. For this, we introduce two decomposition criteria to apply in order to decompose the design project into several independent work groups. The objective is to balance the workload between the various groups. Then, we define a set of organisation principles that should be applied to determine whether a group is able to work efficiently or whether it must be reorganised. Applying these organisation principles makes it possible to identify the responsibilities inside each work group, and the responsibilities between the groups. The objective is to facilitate information flow and to avoid losing semantic information. The proposed method contributes to defining the optimal organisation of a design project. The definition of this organisation is based on knowledge deduced from the analysis of previous projects. The objective is then to re-use this knowledge in similar future projects.