Challenges and Opportunities for Innovation in the Public Works ...

Arthur Baskin and Stephen C-Y Lu
7. Summary and Conclusion
In this paper, concurrent engineering was defined as a system approach to cooperative team work
in product development. The technological challenges of concurrent engineering were explained
by comparing product development costs at different stages and examining the impact of
engineering changes. Using a system perspective of concurrent engineering the research and
development needs were presented. Based on these challenges, a set of functional requirements
of concurrent engineering computer tools were identified. These requirements were explained
with respect to their roles in integration of complementary engineering expertise, cooperation of
multiple competing perspectives, coimmunication of upstream and downstream concerns, and
coordination of group problem-solving activities. The knowledge processing technology was
defined and introduced as a foundation for developing intelligent software that can meet these
requirements. Some recent results of various KPT tools to support concurrent engineering were
briefly reported.
As noted in this paper, concurrent engineering is a complex system problem which requires
technological, organizational, and, perhaps, cultural solutions. Although computers are not the
final solution, they certainly play a very critical role in the realization of concurrent engineering.
Developing intelligent computer tools for concurrent engineering tasks can not only help our
product development practice but also result in new software paradigms which are more suitable
for integration of complex system problems, meeting one of the most challenging tasks in
engineering automation.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledges Allied-Signal Aerospace Company, Caterpillar Inc., Computer-Aided
Manufacturing International, Digital Equipment Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Illinois Solid
Waste Research Offi..e, National Science Foundation, U.S. Army Construction Engineering
Research Laboratory, and Xerox Corporation for their support to his Know ledge-Based
Engineering Systems Research Laboratory (KBESRL) to conduct knowledge processing research
in the domain of concurrent engineering. Fie is also grateful to KBESRL research staff whose
hard work has contributed to making the knowledge processing idea more than just a philosophy.
Specific thanks to Case (MEGA), Doi 'XROT-IDEEA), Hall (NEURAL), Herman (IDEEA,
TOPS, NEXT-IDEEA), Lucenti (C '), Mattox (INDEED), Rao (INVERSE), Sch%%arz
(PRO-IDEEA), Tanquary (PRIDE, Ilk, Tarbell (CYCLE), Tcheng (AIMS, META-AIMS),
Thompson (AIDEMS , Whitehall (KBL), Wilhelm (CASCADE-T), and Yerrarnareddy (HIDER).
References
(1) U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Delivering the Goods: Public Works
Technologies, Managerment, and Finance, OTA-SET-477 (Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office, April 1991).
(2) Chao, N. H., S. C-Y. Lu, Concurrent Product and Process Design, ASME Publication
No. PED-Vol. 36 (DE-Vol. 21), New York, NY, Dec. 1989 (Original Editions).
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