A HIERARCHICAL APPROACH TO CONCURRENT ENGINEERING SYSTEMS

Concurrent engineering (CE) involves the consideration during the design phase of the various factors associated with the life cycle of the product. Several computer systems have been developed to assist in this task. While these systems can be useful, the scale of the CE problem can overwhelm the various approaches. This paper proposes the use of a hierarchical approach to CE systems. The proposed hierarchical approach is based on an amalgamation of conjunctive and disjunctive hierarchies and is called hierarchical concurrent engineering systems (HCESs). The hierarchical formalism of HCESs is defined. Methods for relating levels within the HCES are developed and described. The form of the solution procedure for HCES is detailed and considerations are given for the issue of complexity. An example is given that uses a CE system for turbine blades to illustrate the operation of HCESs. The HCES approach has several advantages. First, the modularity provided by HCESs can improve the understandability of the model. Second, the designers can concentrate on particular aspects of the hierarchy. Third, the model can be modified or extended relatively easily. Fourth, the resulting implementation can allow multiple users to interact with one model, which means that a number of different viewpoints (or perspectives) can be processed at the same time. Fifth, the computational effort needed can be significantly reduced.