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SEKE 2012 Proceedings - Knowledge Systems Institute

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A data collaboration model for collaborative design<br />

based on C-net<br />

Xin Gao, Wenhui Hu, Wei Ye, ZHANG Shi-kun<br />

School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science,<br />

National Engineering Research Center for Software<br />

Engineering Key laboratory of High Confidence Software<br />

Technologies (Ministry of Education)<br />

Peking University<br />

Beijing, China<br />

gaoxin54@gmail.com<br />

Xuan Sun<br />

Key Lab of Universal Wireless Communications, MOE<br />

Wireless Network Lab<br />

Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications<br />

Beijing, China<br />

E-mail: sunxuanbupt@gmail.com<br />

Abstract—Process modeling is the base of complex product<br />

collaborative design, and the requirements of data collaboration<br />

in collaborative design process challenge at the aspects of<br />

parameter flow, concurrency, multi-versioning, repeat design and<br />

so on. To specify the data collaboration between design processes<br />

based on parameters, this paper provides a dataflow-oriented<br />

process collaboration model based on C-net model. Through the<br />

analysis of the data collaboration between design processes, we<br />

conclude some process collaboration patterns, including level<br />

task interaction, concurrent task interaction and repeat task<br />

interaction. Then provide the structure descriptions for these<br />

patterns, and explain the application scenes of theses patterns in<br />

collaborative design. At last, define the collaborative unit for each<br />

pattern and describe the data collaboration mechanism of<br />

process collaboration patterns by their element and relationship.<br />

Keywords- collborative design; data collaboration; C-net<br />

I. INTRODUCTION<br />

In the process of complex product design, the way of<br />

collaborative product design and development is the advanced<br />

cooperation model, which organizes the distributed team into a<br />

group to develop the product collaboratively so as t o improve<br />

the efficiency of development [1]. Comparing to traditional<br />

product design process, collaborative design process has the<br />

features of concurrency, distribution, dynamism and<br />

collaboration. In workflow, collaborative design process<br />

mainly depends on data collaboration based on parameter<br />

exchange. So how to implement the modeling for data<br />

collaboration of design process effectively becomes an<br />

important research topic, and at the same time it presents<br />

critical challenge to workflow modeling, which includes<br />

following aspects:<br />

<br />

<br />

<br />

Support iteration of design process<br />

Support the expression of data flow and control flow<br />

Support data collaboration in different scope<br />

From these facts, we can see that collaborative design<br />

actually is the complex distributed parallel interaction process,<br />

which execute data collaboration mainly in the form of data<br />

exchange. So traditional control flow oriented business<br />

workflow can’t describe complex data relationship and data<br />

exchange process, and need to take the idea and method of<br />

science workflow which mainly focus on data flow. Comparing<br />

to business workflow, science workflow can describe complex<br />

process and large-scale data exchange and transformation. At<br />

the same time, traditional business workflow can’t deal with<br />

the alterations of process collaboration which are caused by the<br />

changeability of design requirements at runtime. Meanwhile<br />

science workflow support breakpoint setting, and iterative<br />

execution, which can improve the flexibility of data<br />

collaboration among processes.<br />

Based on these features of collaborative design workflow,<br />

this paper takes the advantage of business workflow and<br />

science workflow, expresses dataflow oriented, constraint,<br />

parallel and iterative execution by C-net model. Then conclude<br />

a set of process collaboration model by analyzing the features<br />

of collaborative design workflow. At last, provide the<br />

construction mechanism of collaboration model based on C-net,<br />

so that the data collaboration model for collaborative design<br />

can ensure the workflow based on this model to effectively<br />

implement data collaboration process.<br />

II.<br />

RELATED WORK<br />

A. Workflow modeling<br />

To the research of workflow modeling, currently there are<br />

still no uniform modeling standard. From current work, the<br />

modeling methods mainly include flow chart, state diagram,<br />

activity network, IDEF, ECAA, event driven process model,<br />

Petri net and so on. Among these modeling methods, Petri net<br />

is the most widely used modeling method [2].<br />

To implement the parallel execution, collaboration and<br />

optimization between the workflows of related design teams, it<br />

needs to build the model which can reflect the relationships<br />

between upstream and downstream of design organizations,<br />

and process modeling is t he important base of parallel<br />

execution. Traditional Petri net can’t effectively support the<br />

expression of the combination of data flow and control flow,<br />

data collaboration, iterative execution. So C-net model which<br />

presents by doctor Yuan[3] is used in this paper to describe<br />

data collaboration among collaborative design workflows,<br />

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