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Comprehending existing multi-threaded applications effectively is a challenge without proper assistance. Research has been proposed to mine programs to extract aspects of high-level design but not much to reverse-engineer the concurrent design from multi-threaded applications. To address the same, we develop a generic mathematical model to interpret run-time non-deterministic events and encode functional as well as thread-specific behaviour in form of quantifiable features, which can be fitted into a standard solver for automated inference of design aspects from multi-threaded applications. We build a tool Dcube based on the mathematical model and use various classifiers of a machine learning framework to infer design aspects related to concurrency and resource management. We collect a dataset of 480 projects from Github, CodeProject and Stack Overflow and 3 benchmark suites—CDAC Pthreads, Open POSIX Test Suites and PARSEC 3.0 and achieve an accuracy score of around 93.71% for all the design choices.

Industry 4.0 has sparked rapid changes in the manufacturing and construction sectors, leading to a significant shift in how off-site factory-based panelized construction machines are designed and manufactured. Concurrent engineering which seeks to close the gap between design and manufacturing sectors provides an ideal environment for machine development. It is a systematic methodology to integrate machines holistic concurrent design activities and their related processes. Competition arising in the marketplace for newly developed machines is driving modifications in the way machine designers develop production machines. Thus, to boost the efficiency in concurrent machine development, appropriate evaluation, and decision analysis tools required to be developed and utilized. Currently, there is no DFX selection tool available to aid the designer in concurrent machine design applications. In this paper, these challenges are addressed through a comprehensive qualitative literature review of DFX techniques with their implementation in Stuart Pugh: Total Design Activity Model. Various DFX techniques are mapped and clustered in a collaborative scheme, interactions and links between them are identified, and the relative importance weight of each is calculated. A description of a functional DFX scheme is proposed in this paper that can aid designers in establishing lean design processes for machine development and reveals its potential application in Multi-DFX fuzzy multi-criteria decision-support system.

This paper uses the fuzzy theory basics to assess accident risk that may damage a target (e.g., humans, assets, or the environment). Converting a target’s position to a membership degree in a fuzzy danger zone (FDZ) helps calculate risk indices. Using FDZs normalizes the effects of different kinds of hazards, similarly visualizes them, and distinguishes the impact of a threat on various types of targets. This paper presents a related mathematical formulation. The proposed approach evaluates the accident risks by simulating industrial activities in CAD, virtual reality, and augmented reality when using a concurrent engineering platform. This approach can calculate the risk index during a human task simulation and through real-time human interaction with a virtual machine during safety analysis and training. The results also are credible to activate alarm systems according to the operator’s limbs place during work. The model provides a normalized and similar scale for various risks (e.g., biological, chemical, and physical hazards) and computes the effect of danger on different target types.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL's) Architecture Team (A-Team) has nearly a decade of experience in maturing early formulation mission and technology concepts by combining innovative collaborative engineering methods with cutting-edge subject matter expertise and advanced analysis tools in an in-person environment. When COVID-19 forced JPL's workforce to work remotely in March 2020, A-Team had to quickly pivot from an in-person collaborative environment to a remote working environment. Through introspection, careful planning, and considerable practice, A-Team was able to develop new operating procedures to effectively continue early formulation studies in a virtual environment. A-Team has held over 57 remote studies in the 10 months since the start of mandatory telework at JPL in March 2020. In the remote setting, A-Team conducts studies in half-day sessions with clients and subject matter experts (SMEs) via videoconferencing, shared computer screens, and digital collaborative tools. The key lesson is that increased staffing and planning is needed to prepare and successfully run remote A-Team studies. Remote A-Team studies require careful selection of the appropriate tools for security, accessibility, and usability within the NASA/JPL environment. Knowledge capture methods and templates need to be thought out and agreed upon in advance as there is less room for improvising in a remote format. Various communication channels have to be monitored to allow for team coordination while maintaining fruitful participant engagement during a session. In addition, technical backup for all roles within the A-Team have to be identified to allow the study to continue even if a team member's connectivity is temporarily interrupted. Finally, careful thought has to be put into methods and processes to create a collaborative environment in a virtual space such that a group of experts who are only connected via the internet can experience the creative spark and flow of a great collaborative and innovative study.

We argue that the utility of time as a semantic property of software is not limited to the domain of real-time systems. This paper outlines four concurrent design patterns: alignment, precedence, simultaneity, and consistency, all of which are relevant to general-purpose software applications. We show that a semantics of logical time provides a natural framework for reasoning about concurrency, makes some difficult problems easy, and offers a quantified interpretation of the CAP theorem, enabling quantified evaluation of the tradeoff between consistency and availability.

In this paper, the development procedure of an innovative control algorithm is shown, with the aim of improving handling performance of a high-end sport vehicle by actively controlling aerodynamic forces acting on the vehicle itself. The proposed control algorithm operates indirectly by modifying ride-heights of the vehicle through an active suspensions system. The vehicle dynamics analysis is conducted in parallel to the aerodynamics analysis performed in a concurrent engineering operation. The software used for control algorithms development is VI-CarRealTime, in co-simulation with Matlab-Simulink, with an extended use of the MaxPerformance package. Specific tracks have been implemented ad hoc to highlight the effects of the control systems operation in development phase. To better explore the potential of the technique, a fuzzy logic system was developed.

In this paper, a new version of IPO called (VLIPO- Variable Length Inclined Planes System Optimization Algorithm) has been provided primarily. Then, an efficient tool for simultaneous design and training of an ANFIS (adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system) has been proposed using the mentioned algorithm. It should be noted that till the present time, related research has been only dealing with finding type and location of membership functions or proposing a method of training such networks. Length of standard versions of heuristic algorithms has been mainly the reason for not specifying the type and location of membership and training an ANFIS network simultaneously. For the same reason, first, a new version of the IPO is introduced with such factors being variable. Then, such capability is used for specifying the type and location of membership functions and simultaneous training of an ANFIS classifier. It goes without saying that the idea of making variations in search factors could be also implemented in other heuristic methods. Some of them have been reported in the research. Therefore, the presented idea in the paper may be applied to other heuristic methods and used in the design and simultaneous training of an ANFIS. So, the results from the comparison made between implementing the proposed method and other methods of which a version with a variable length has been previously reported (PSO, ACOR, DE, and GA) have been presented in several well-known databases. The results showed the better execution of ANFIS classifier designed by VLIPO compared to other heuristic methods.

A contribution to the definitions of Sequential Engineering (SeqE), Simultaneous Engineering (SE), Concurrent Engineering (CE), and Collaborative Engineering (ColE) is presented. The need for contribution to better clarification of the referred engineering and design concepts, and approaches, is because there are identified many problems in definitions found in the literature that generate misinterpretations about the underlying semantic contents presented. Among others, the most frequent problems are 1) keeping the same denominating term, or syntagm, for different semantic contents, implying different definitions, and 2) using different denominating term, or syntagm, for the same semantic contents, implying same definitions. At the end, the paper presents the table with the corresponded main, or global, “signature” attributes, along with the argumentation, distinguishing clearly all four engineering and design concepts SeqE, SE, CE, ColE.

With the development of Global market, it has become a major challenge for most of the manufacturing enterprises around the world to optimize their production strategies because of the demand for “The better quality product with shorter lead time and lower life cycle cost”. In order to meet these requirements, many enterprises face a critical need for advanced system engineering for Engineering. The changeover from the Traditional method of manufacturing to Concurrent method of manufacturing is one of the solutions. The front fork of the leading two wheeler was chosen for implementing the Redesign in Concurrent Engineering (CE). The main objective is to reduce the Manufacturing lead time and the cost of the product. The Co-ordinates of the already existing Front fork of a leading 2 wheeler was done using Co-ordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) and the model of the fork was obtained in CATIA, which is a Reverse Engineering concept. The model of the fork was stored in a database, such that it can be retrieved anytime in future. Slight variations in the design in future can also accommodated. Parts with similar design attributes can be grouped such that the Group Technology is achieved. The machining simulation was done using CATIA. The machining simulation can also be used to group the components having similar manufacturing attributes by storing the machining codes generated, in the database. The buckling analysis of the component was done using ANSYS for compressed loading condition. As the number of iterations in the Redesign-Concurrent method increased, both time and the cost reduced drastically.

Fast-tracking a project involves carrying out sequential activities in parallel, partially overriding their original order of precedence, to reduce the overall project duration. The current predominant mathematical models of fast-tracking are based on the concepts of activity sensitivity, evolution, dependency and, sometimes, information exchange uncertainty, and aim to determine optimum activity overlaps. However, these models require some subjective inputs from the scheduler and most of them neglect the merge event bias. In this paper, a stochastic model for schedule fast-tracking is proposed. Relevant findings highlight the existence of a pseudo-physical barrier that suggests that the possibility of shortening a schedule by more than a quarter of its original duration is highly unlikely. The explicit non-linear relationship between cost and overlap has also been quantified for the first time. Finally, manual calculations using the new model are compared with results from a Genetic Algorithm through a case study.

A key tool for mechanical engineering are computer-aided design (CAD) systems for determining the product shape and specifying the necessary production information. Today’s CAD systems include functionalities for knowledge-based engineering which allow the partly automation of design tasks and thus shorten lead time in product development. Another way for this is concurrent engineering which means to involve experts from different domains early in the design process. In order to transfer and integrate this approach in knowledge-based engineering, the implementation of a multi-agent system is a possible way. Such systems consist of entities that are capable of autonomous action, interact intelligently with their environment, communicate and collaborate. This paper proposes a concept and shows a basic implementation for such a multi-agent system as an extension for standard CAD software. The agents take the role of domain experts like manufacturing technologists, jig designer, etc. and analyse as well make suggestions for the optimization of the design of mechanical engineering parts.

Consistency management is an important task in the context of Domain-Specific Language (DSL) development. It involves operations such as program (model) transformation, synchronisation, integration, and consistency checking, which are all tasks required to enable concurrent engineering using multiple DSLs. Even though consistency management is a well-researched topic, existing approaches either implement a fixed strategy for each consistency management operation, or do not scale for large models. This has been criticised in the literature, as practical applications require not only reasonable scalability with model size, but also unite multiple consistency management tasks within one tool. To raise the adaptability of such a tool to an appropriate level, a uniform way of performing these tasks is a desirable goal. In this paper, we propose an approach to consistency management that leverages a synergetic combination of Triple Graph Grammars and Integer Linear Programming. By modelling consistency management as an optimisation problem with a configurable objective function, we are able to uniformly address a wide range of consistency management operations. We show that our approach scales acceptably in practice, while still guaranteeing that a consistent solution is found if and only if one exists.

Low production volume applications cannot use custom fixtures to reduce uncertainties in part locations. Traditional tool-path planners for area coverage applications may not perform satisfactorily when there is significant uncertainty in part locations because these planners do not account for the tool-part contact and impedance controller parameters during path execution. This may lead to tool collision with the part, incorrect force at the Tool Center Point (TCP), and loss of contact while performing area coverage operations. Moreover, the poorly designed tool-path and incorrectly estimated impedance control parameters also lead to poor task performance. To avoid such failures, we concurrently design a collision-free tool-paths, generate executable robot trajectory, and select the impedance compensation parameters so that it can take care of part uncertainties and provide the desired tool-part contact. We apply the designed algorithm for area coverage manufacturing applications. Finally, we evaluate the algorithm performance by conducting physical experiments.

Recent introduction of data mining methods has led to a paradigm shift in the way we can analyze space data. This paper demonstrates that Artificial Intelligence (AI), and especially the field of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KRR), could also be successfully employed at the start of the space mission life cycle via an Expert System (ES) used as a Design Engineering Assistant (DEA). An ES is an AI-based agent used to solve complex problems in particular fields. There are many examples of ES being successfully implemented in the aeronautical, agricultural, legal or medical fields. Applied to space mission design, and in particular, in the context of concurrent engineering sessions, an ES could serve as a knowledge engine and support the generation of the initial design inputs, provide easy and quick access to previous design decisions or push to explore new design options. Integrated to the User design environment, the DEA could become an active assistant following the design iterations and flagging model inconsistencies. Today, for space missions design, experts apply methods of concurrent engineering and Model-Based System Engineering, relying both on their implicit knowledge (i.e., past experiences, network) and on available explicit knowledge (i.e., past reports, publications, data sheets). The former knowledge type represents still the most significant amount of data, mostly unstructured, non-digital or digital data of various legacy formats. Searching for information through this data is highly time-consuming. A solution is to convert this data into structured data to be stored into a Knowledge Graph (KG) that can be traversed by an inference engine to provide reasoning and deductions on its nodes. Knowledge is extracted from the KG via a User Interface (UI) and a query engine providing reliable and relevant knowledge summaries to the Human experts. The DEA project aims to enhance the productivity of experts by providing them with new insights into a large amount of data accumulated in the field of space mission design. Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), Knowledge Management (KM) and Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) methods are leveraged to develop the DEA. Building the knowledge base manually is subjective, time-consuming, laborious and error bound. This is why the knowledge base generation and population rely on Ontology Learning (OL) methods. This OL approach follows a modified model of the Ontology Layer Cake. This paper describes the approach and the parameters used for the qualitative trade-off for the selection of the software to be adopted in the architecture of the ES. The study also displays the first results of the multi-word extraction and highlights the importance of Word Sense Disambiguation for the identification of synonyms in the context. This paper includes the detailed software architecture of both front and back-ends, as well as the tool requirements. Both architectures and requirements were refined after a set of interviews with experts from the European Space Agency. The paper finally presents the preliminary strategy to quantify and mitigate uncertainties within the ES.

t Part 4: Coordination Patterns; International audience; We provide a solution for the design of safe concurrent systems by compositional application of verified design patterns-called ar-chitectures-to a small set of functional components. To this end, we extend the theory of architectures developed previously for the BIP framework with the elements necessary for handling data: definition and operations on data domains, syntax and semantics of composition operators involving data transfer. We provide a set of conditions under which composition of architectures preserves their characteristic safety properties. To verify that individual architectures do enforce their associated properties , we provide an encoding into open pNets, an intermediate model that supports SMT-based verification. The approach is illustrated by a case study based on a previously developed BIP model of a nanosatellite on-board software.

International audience; The concept of simultaneous engineering has been used for several years in the industry. However, it rarely aims to think the design of the product and the design of its industrial system (the factory) together. In this paper, we address the need to have a global view of architectural design and manufacturing throughout the entire design process. More precisely, we define a model-based approach which makes it possible to evaluate the impact of a product design on its manufacturability. This approach constitutes a first step, in a long-term perspective, to consider several high-level industrial systems and product designs together and choose the one that gives the best performances.; Le concept d'ingénierie simultanée est utilisé depuis plusieurs années dans l'industrie. Cependant, il vise rarement à penser ensemble la conception du produit et la conception de son système industriel (l'usine). Dans cet article, nous abordons la nécessité d'avoir une vision globale de la conception architecturale et de la fabrication tout au long du processus de conception. Plus précisément, nous définissons une approche basée sur un modèle qui permet d'évaluer l'impact de la conception d'un produit sur sa faisabilité. Cette approche constitue une première étape, dans une perspective à long terme, pour considérer ensemble plusieurs systèmes industriels de haut niveau et plusieurs conceptions de produits afin de choisir celui qui donne les meilleures performances.

Customized/personalized products are gaining more shares in today’s product market. Such products need collective efforts from consumers, manufacturers and third parties. This requirement has not been well addressed due to both market and technology factors. On the other hand, the Internet of Things (IoT) provides real-time sensing/actuating ability and fast transmission capability of data/information, so that remote operation of manufacturing activities and efficient collaboration among stakeholders are greatly facilitated. This provides great opportunities to address the requirement mentioned above. Thus we propose a full-connection model of product design and manufacturing in the IoT-enabled cloud manufacturing environment. The proposed model uses social networks to connect multiple parties and facilitate open innovations, and use IoT to glue physical space to cyber space and cloud manufacturing to provide various elastic services, so that the on-demand workspace, interaction, information sharing or collective problem solving are enabled. We also propose a supporting infrastructure for this model using the latest information and communication technologies. Finally, we present a case study of an RFID enabled production system for customized and personalized product with the ability to enable a new paradigm of “dynamic processes and close collaborations among different roles” and ensure robust production.

The development of multi-user CAD (MUCAD) tools has opened up exciting new opportunities and applications. The capability for multiple users to simultaneously model and design a CAD part has far-reaching potential. However, many basic questions remains unanswered, such as how many users should work together on a given part. This research proposes and develops a set of methods to determine the optimal number of users for a given part within a MUCAD environment, based on the characteristics of the part itself. Two candidate models are evaluated with a set of 60 experiments with design teams composed of different numbers of users. The models show modest correlations with the test data while more-refined models are explored to improve predictive power. On the other hand, highly significant correlations between the ability to predict completion time and multi-user team size were identified in the experimental data. Observations regarding the speed and quality of MUCAD teams are also made with future ar...

Design engineering process for field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based reactor trip functions are developed in this work. The process discussed in this work is based on the systems engineering approach. The overall design process is effectively implemented by combining with design and implementation processes. It transforms its overall development process from traditional V-model to Y-model. This approach gives the benefit of concurrent engineering of design work with software implementation. As a result, it reduces development time and effort. The design engineering process consisted of five activities, which are performed and discussed: needs/systems analysis; requirement analysis; functional analysis; design synthesis; and design verification and validation. Those activities are used to develop FPGA-based reactor bistable trip functions that trigger reactor trip when the process input value exceeds the setpoint. To implement design synthesis effectively, a model-based design technique is implied. The finite-state machine with data path structural modeling technique together with very high speed integrated circuit hardware description language and the Aldec Active-HDL tool are used to design, model, and verify the reactor bistable trip functions for nuclear power plants.

An attitude determination and control system (ADCS) model is presented, which is used for CubeSat preliminary design stages in accordance with the European Space Agency (ESA) concurrent design approach. The model is implemented in Matlab/Simulink and integrated into the Concurrent Design Platform. The model’s performance is exemplified by a mission preliminary design conducted in the Concurrent Engineering Lab at Skoltech.

One of the main factors affecting the acceptance of social housing projects is the non-participation of users in their building’s design. The VIS Project breaks with this idealistic scheme of unilateral projection and proposes a concurrent engineering where citizen participation is taken into account in the collection of statistical data and also in its idiosyncrasy, ancestral values and life models. The Quality Function Deployment is one of the methodologies that are implemented in addition to bioclimatic design with passive cooling and solar control strategies. The multidisciplinary team made up of engineers, architects and interior and industrial designers together with students of Architecture and Interior Design careers of the School of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Guayaquil have managed to bring to low-income sectors practical solutions to self-build dwellings problems. The procedures and methods applied are adapted to the particular case of each user, giving particular solutions analyzed under multiple criteria.

The study identifies diverse methodologies related to new designs development and implementation, in conjunction with product function analysis for each component interacting into system assembly, through multidisciplinary work teams. Automotive gasoline module and its components evaluated looking forward improvement opportunities and cost reductions, affecting directly components shape and quantity. Results show up: material components change, assembly components modification, components quantity goes up and down based on customer needs. Several methodologies combined as concurrent engineering, reverse engineering, and design for manufacturing among others are used. Prototypes constructed in 3D printer using selective laser sintering. Statistical tests were positive.

Many industrial areas are faced with a continuous increase in system complexity, while systems need to satisfy stringent timing requirements, which are traditionally based on the tasks' local deadlines. However, correct functionality is subject to high-level timing requirements on data propagation through a set of semantically related tasks. Since distributed concurrent engineering is often used to deal with the complexity of such systems, violations of data propagation delay constraints are only visible at late development stages, where changes in system design become increasingly expensive.In this paper, we leverage job-level dependencies (JLDs) that can be specified at early development stages to guarantee data propagation delay constraints. Therefore, we present an approach that extends the Real-Time Systems Compiler to enforce the JLDs in actual multicore schedules. This strategy enables us to perform extensive evaluations of the effectiveness of JLDs in combination with contemporary allocation and scheduling algorithms, where we observed schedulability improvements of up to 42%. Additionally, we identified the effect of the number of available cores on the data age.

A design of nautical project using project-based learning was developed by collaborative partners and implement in two different Universities in Chile. The experience uses the concurrent engineering supported by computing platform and design techniques: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Finite Element Method (FEM) and Computer Aided Design (CAD) as tools for enhancing the innovative capacity of students. Interdisciplinary teams are grouped by capacities and technical interests, they worked in the developing stages of the project of naval team for an international competition. The design and construction areas are approached all the technical components for a naval team; the 3d digital concept, the ergonometric studies, the computational simulations, the hydrodynamics, the resistance analysis of materials, the processes engineer, the 3D prototype, and the assisted manufacturing on computer. The research presents the obtained results by the two teams, the PBL comparison with lecture course, outcomes, and challenges.

Mining social media is a popular strategy to revitalize any business. The social media lodges colossal amount of user spawn data which can be used for data mining. The purpose of this research paper is to develop a feature-based software model to analyze customer reviews of an organization using their Facebook page and provide valuable insights for decision making, product quality development, and process improvements. Thus enabling concurrent engineering activities and enhancing collaboration between various departments within the organization. As a sample case study, we have analyzed the customer reviews of a restaurant using the J48 classification algorithm and K-means clustering algorithm to identify areas which need improvement. Results show that customers are giving more importance to features such as the taste, variety of drinks, price, and service, In addition, customers are least bothered about the location, offers, and ambiance of the South Indian restaurant under study.

Adopting the mechatronics as contemporary most emerging engineering discipline the integration of mechanical and electrical computer aided design (CAD) (MCAD/ECAD) systems remains a big challenge in concurrent engineering because their data models and functionality have been developed continuously further apart. Market research confirms that an integrated tool chain for ECAD and MCAD design is prerequisite for a better mechatronic development process. This paper presents the overview of various integration approaches with different degree of maturity and describes the concept of deep integration for mechatronic products conducted by ProSTEP iViP Association which combines existing standards in engineering collaboration context. Version 3 of the current ProSTEP iViP Recommendation PSI 5 entitled “ECAD/MCAD-Collaboration” provides a comprehensive specification for collaboration between the ECAD and MCAD worlds. A considerable number of vendors have now implemented the underlying data schema and integrated it in the corresponding products. As a result, users can now choose the solutions that best meet their particular needs from an increasingly wide range of efficient systems for collaborative product development within the ECAD and MCAD fields.

Thermal polymethylmethacrylate/polyvinylchloride surface composite co-extrusion profile (referred to as composite profile for short in the following part) was cooled and calibrated through calibrator. Calibrator cooling was completed by its internal flow of water. As a result, the design of the calibrator cooling channel structure was an important foundation for guaranteeing the molding quality of the material. According to the target function, preliminary design was conducted for cooling channel structure of the calibrator. Atypia design optimisation was carried out for local cooling channel structure around the composite profile by numerical simulation using analysis software. The result suggests the following: the cooling effect has been increased; on the basis of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Engineering (CAD/CAE) network system expert database of concurrent engineering, it is further optimised to design the cooling channel structure of calibrator. The optimisation focuses on composite profile, structure, size and performance of the extrusive composite.

This article reports the use of a stochastic computer model to study hybrid overlapping and functional interaction strategies, where, within a given process, different degrees of overlapping or gradually increasing or decreasing functional interaction were modeled. The study aims to understand the contribution of these strategies to process performance, that is, product development effort and span time. Simulation results of the hybrid models are discussed in comparison to a baseline model, where the baseline process was uniformly overlapped and functional interaction was constant throughout its execution. Research outcomes indicate that under high information uncertainty, sequential processes perform better than any model with overlap. When uncertainty is moderate or low, the baseline model outperforms the hybrid models. Under high sensitivity conditions, hybrid overlapping models perform equally well in comparison to the baseline model with complete overlap, and superiorly when information evolution is slow.

This paper addresses the concept of the Expert system approach for CASD/CAM integration and optimization of product design and manufacturing in computer base concurrent engineering environment. The Expert system links with design and manufacturing databases. The design specification is acquired through a feature based approach. The Expert system links with material, tools, CNC machine center data and databases. For each design feature, the expert system provides information needed for design and manufacturing optimization. The expert system can be used as an advisory system for designers and manufacturing engineers using STEP (standard for exchange of product data) AP224 standard. and also for new CNC machine center operators. A designer uses proengineers software and feature base library and design a part. Design data stored in data base according to international standard STEP format. All suppliers can used the latest design data through computer network system and STEP design data. The result of table 1 shows that the expert system estimates correctly machining cycle time and cost and penetration rate. In practical, estimation of machining time and cost, feeds and all other parameters are difficult to obtain. In contrast the expert system can provide this estimation usually in less than 20 seconds.

Simultaneous multi-user computer-aided design enables teams of designers to contribute simultaneously to the same model. As multiple users make contributions to the model, all users see additions from all other collaborators in real-time. However, without careful coordination, conflicts that violate the design intent of the model may occur. These are referred to as semantic conflicts and lead to redundant work by users. This article presents a method to reduce semantic conflicts through a task management system integrated directly into multi-user computer-aided design. Experiments were run that compare multi-user teams’ design modeling times with and without the integrated task management system. The results of these experiments show that the integrated task management system significantly reduces the time to complete design models by reducing semantic conflicts through enhanced organization and communication.

With the knowledge that different types of Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) are performed by different disciplines located in different organizational units, which have a lot of common information, the following conclusions are considered as mandatory in order to avoid duplication of work and traceability of data: •A common FMEA database shall be used by different disciplines / departments. •The common FMEA database must enable different views - depending on information needed by the relevant user. •The common FMEA database must enable different filtering and grouping capabilities •Clear input responsibilities must be defined such that only the responsible discipline can enter relevant information. •The common FMEA database must enable links or at least easy data transfer to other analyses (such as Reliability Prediction (link), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) (link), Preventive Maintenance Analysis (PMA) (system part) (link) and Logistic Support Analysis (LSA) (data transfer). The common FMEA database should be realized using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software, due to cost saving reasons, and should be integrated in a software landscape including other Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, Testability and Safety (RAMTS) analyses (see last point above) to enable data links and exchange in an easy manner. The FMEA shall become the core database for Reliability, Maintainability, Testability and Safety analyses (similar to the LSA database for Integrated Logistic Support (ILS)). The main contributors to a common FMEA database and a possible workshare between the different concurrent engineering disciplines are shown at the end of the conclusion chapter.

The article provides a novel approach to the implementation of virtual reality within planning and design of manual processes and systems. The use of hardware and software required to perform different production  especially assembly  tasks in a virtual environment, using CAD parts as interactive elements, is presented. Considering the CAD parts, the format conversion problem is comprehensively described and solved using format conversion software to overcome the present poor data connectivity between the CAD system and virtual reality hardware and software. Two examples of work processes have been made in a virtual environment: peg-in-hole and wall socket assembly. In the latter case, the traditional planning approach of manual assembly tasks using predetermined motion time system MTM-2 has been compared with a modern approach in which the assembly task is fully performed within a virtual environment. The comparison comprises a discussion on the assembly task execution times. In addition, general and specific advantages and disadvantages that arise in the immersive designing of production processes using virtual reality are presented, as well as reflections on teamwork and collaborative man-machine work. Finally, novel technologies are proposed to overcome the main problems that occur when implementing virtual reality, such as time-consuming scene defining or tedious CAD software data conversion.

Autonomic fault tolerant scheduling is now a mandatory approach for the execution of performance-motivated Cloud applications such as scientific workflows. Since concurrent engineering is strongly associated with scientific workflows, an efficient scheduling for scientific workflows can have major impact on the performance of concurrent systems and engineering applications in Cloud computing. To facilitate the execution of concurrent tasks in scientific workflows, Cloud providers entail efficient scheduling heuristics and fault tolerant approaches. The work presented in this article formulates an effort focusing on this research problem to design an autonomic fault tolerant scheduling approach for scientific workflow applications. First, hybrid heuristic has been proposed to schedule scientific workflows effectively. Second, fault tolerant technique has been implemented using virtual machine migration approach that migrates the virtual machine automatically in case of task failure occurrences due to the overutilization of resources. Furthermore, the proposed approach has been validated through performance evaluation parameters using CloudSim and WorkflowSim toolkits. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach to improve the performance of scientific workflows by appreciably reducing total mean execution time, standard deviation time, and makespan.

The control system of aeroengine design is a complex system engineeringincludingmany procedure of different subsystems. To improve the efficiency of areoengine control system design and reduce the cost and development period of research procedure, model-based areoengine control system design method can be used for integrating systems, collaborative design and optimizing design. Model-based aeroengine control system design workflow consists of the phases from analysis of system requirements to semi-physics simulation verification. The managementapproach and designprocedure can help to separate the whole design workflow into different sub-phases which can help to scheme the concurrent design procedure of complex control system in order to improve the efficiency of aeroenginedesign and optimize the performance of aeroengine control system. QC 2016-02-12

A methodology is presented for the estimation of recyclability indicators of product designs. It combines an automated CAD-integrated disassembly sequence generation algorithm and a recyclability assessment module. The algorithm employs collision detection and CAD feature recognition for the extraction of disassembly tiers and sequences of specific components. This information together with the components’ characteristics, including materials, is then processed by the corresponding module, which is capable of providing an initial evaluation about the product's recyclability. The methodology is demonstrated through an industrial case study, involving rear axle designs that are associated to different truck models.

Nowadays, mechanical products which respond to customer requirements become more and more complex. Concurrent engineering environment requires that various computer-aided tools be used concurrently for design, analysis, and validation of complex product. Computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools should have the capacity of integration or easy interoperability. However, many of them are often unconnected systems that are not intended for collaborative use. Engineering designers and analysts tend to use specific CAD software for design and other CAE software for analysis. Consequently, the triplet (Cost/Delay/Quality) of a complex product cannot be improved. In this paper, a disassembly plan (DP) generation based on a coupling between Solidworks and Matlab is detailed. Base on an encapsulation of parts into a subassemblies bloc, the proposed approach aims to automatically integrate the both softwares in a concurrent engineering context in order to identify and generate a feasible and optimal DP. A comparative example is presented in order to highlight the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed approach.

The article describes a new, original approach to integrated ecodesign of products and technological processes, ensuring appropriate selection of materials and connections from the point of view of recyclability. The method was implemented in an expert system. The decision tree induction method was used as the system tool. The expert system offers a practical solution which makes it possible to change a material or connection without having to consult the product designer. It is consistent with concurrent engineering (CE) design.

Modern value creation is characterized by collaboration of large networks of specialized companies. Due to market requirements and increasing competition, concurrent or simultaneous engineering has become the standard procedure in product development. Still, product development processes often follow the traditionally linear and sequential patterns, allowing for only a narrow scope of iterations. Milestone-driven models are widely used to control and steer such processes. In this article, the authors argue that proper understanding of knowledge flows in development project is an essential aspect to be regarded in design and organization of product development processes. Therefore, a new approach is proposed in this paper which considers the product development process as a set of Engineering Activities. Such activities can be seen as instantiations of processes and are the core of any value creation processes. During an experiment a group of students carried out a simple product development project within a controlled environment. The resulting model was then re-evaluated using survey results from a further student experiment. Both results indicate that the activity model can be applied to describe development projects and that it can be used to identify knowledge flows and barriers within development teams.

The application of Model Driven Engineering in an industrial context implies working with large models, hence the need for collaborative modeling. Each developer focuses on a part of the large model and may manipulate it independently. As each part evolves rapidly and concurrently due to changes made by different designers, inconsistencies may occur. This work aims to provide support for dealing with concurrent changes. We propose a metamodel for the description of large models, and we also propose a process for the management of concurrent changes.

The development process of modern automated manufacturing plants requires a concurrent engineering process that integrates different engineering disciplines. Envisioning a concurrent development process, we propose an engineering process based on an AutomationML metamodel. The proposed metamodel contains standardized mechatronic component models, which acts as the base engineering data for the disciplines and the tools involved in the process. Since the tools operate on discipline-specific data structures, a data conversion tool is introduced which parses AutomationML mechatronic model and produces specific data interpretable by the tool employed. The benefits of this approach are evaluated by generating an automation project in CODESYS Application Composer, employing the metamodel and data conversion tool with the proposed engineering process.

Bipedal locomotion in uncertain environments is a challenging control problem. In order to reduce the effect of imprecise and noisy measurements, performance enhancement, and energy consumption reduction, many researchers employ compliant elements in the robot structure, parallel to the control system. However, there is no systematic methodology for concurrent design of compliant components and the controller. In a primary article, we introduced a method for the simultaneous design of the controller and compliant elements to increase the walking robustness against uncertainties, based on hybrid zero dynamics (HZD) analysis. The overall controller comprising the HZD controller and parallel compliance (PC) is called the HPC controller. In this article, we present two levels of extension:1) extended HPC (EHPC):an extended HPC with fewer constraining assumptions; 2) concurrent control and parallel compliance design (CPC):a generalized version of concurrent control and PC design, which is applicable for any gait control approach, and is not limited to HZD. In this article, apply the Lyapunov, boundedness, and input to state stability concepts to analyze the EHPC's walking robustness. Detailed step-by-step design of this controller for a compass gait model and the MATLAB codes are also provided. An experimental study on a hopper robot supports the generalization in the CPC method to apply to other controllers while pneumatic artificial muscles are utilized as tunable PCs.

It is important for manufacturing companies to provide a standard for product data exchange between diverse computer systems. Past attempts to develop neutral format standards for data exchange have had limited success, and have led to the development of STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product) as a data exchange standard. The STEP standard makes it easier to integrate systems that process various product life-cycle functions, such as design, engineering, manufacturing, logistics support, and will help to facilitate concurrent engineering. The goal of this paper is to facilitate the computer-readable exchange of the product bill of materials (BOM) information for product data management (PDM). In this paper, the STEP ISO 10303-21 is implemented to share the product data information in a manufacturing environment. A structural product bill of materials is first transformed into an Excel file format, then a PDM Schema Exporter is utilized to export a BOM Excel file to a STEP Part 21 file. A C# program decodes the STEP file into BOM information to update the PDM databases in SQL server for product data management. Also, SAS code is written to generate the indented bill of materials from the BOM information, to draw a tree diagram to present an accurate structural view of a product, and to export to PDM databases for product data structural view.

Current commercial computer aided design (CAD) tools limit a parallel engineering design workflow by only allowing a single user in the CAD model at a time. The NSF Center for e-Design at BYU has recently developed multi-user CAD tools which enable a parallel design workflow by allowing multiple users to simultaneously contribute to the same CAD model in real time. The combined challenges of consistent distributed naming and robust interoperation with commercial file types have created scalability and usability issues for previous multi-user CAD implementations. This paper presents persistent naming methods and a file-based architecture that address these challenges. An implementation of these methods shows that multi-user design within commercial CAD is increasingly scalable.

To gain competitive leverage, firms that design and develop complex products seek to optimize the organization structure in their new product development (PD) projects. The overlapped process is a fundamental feature of concurrent engineering, which not only reduces project duration but also increases coordination, communication, and interaction between organizational units. In order to reduce complexity of coordination, this paper proposes a design structure matrix (DSM) method for measuring interaction strength and clustering organizational units. This paper analyzes the impact of overlapping on interaction strength between teams performing these overlapped activities. Further, evolution DSM and sensitivity DSM are constructed for representing evolution degree and sensitivity degree. Based on the concepts of overlapping ratio and relative coordination frequency, this paper proposes a quantitative model using the evolution DSM and sensitivity DSM to measure the interaction strength between teams performing overlapped activities. The two-stage clustering criterion model is proposed for clustering numerical DSM, of which the first-stage clustering criterion is the maximization of the added average interaction strength of the selected organizational units and the second-stage clustering criterion is the minimization of the total coordination time of the PD project. An industrial example is provided to illustrate the proposed model. Results indicate that the clustered numerical DSM can reduce coordination time significantly. The model yields and reinforces several managerial insights, including: how to analyze the interaction strength based on overlapping, the impact of interaction strength on clusters and coordination time.

Selection of the proper materials for a structural component is critical in engineering design. Existing design procedures may currently be sufficient, especially where experience exists, but fierce industrial competition is spurring the search for improved methods and tools. The main drivers are quality, life-cycle cost, time-to-market and material selection. Improved design efficiency and accuracy may depend on specific material selection. This paper discusses the one of the Concurrent Engineering integration strategies i.e., “selection of material” using neural networks that can be adapted for successful integration within industry and beyond using XML and web services. The introduction of computerized design and analysis systems offered the promise of selecting the right material for an optimized design early in the product development cycle. This requires consistent and high-quality material information throughout the design to manufacturing process.

The NSF Center for e-Design, Brigham Young University (BYU) site has re-architected Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools enabling multiple users to concurrently create, modify and view the same CAD part or assembly. This technology allows engineers, designers and manufacturing personnel to simultaneously contribute to the design of a part or assembly in real time, enabling parallel work environments within the CAD system. Such systems are only as robust as their methods for managing conflicts (i.e. simultaneous edits of the same feature by multiple users). A heavy-handed conflict prevention would limit collaborative freedom. This paper discusses an automated feature reservation method which prevents multiple users from simultaneously editing the same feature. The method is implemented in a commercial CAD system. Results show that this methodology prevents data inconsistency that results from feature/self conflicts. This system prevents CAD modeling conflicts, while providing an agile user experience within t...

As an international research facility, the W7-X project hosts many types of components designed not only by the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) teams, but also by external partners. At IPP the Design Engineering (DE) division is responsible for design and spatial integration of all the components within the Torus Hall. Two software tools, interfacing with Computer Aided Design (CAD) models, have been developed in-house to assist in the design and installation of components of W7-X. The first, the Digital MockUp (DMU) is a full scale 3D graphical representation of W7-X generated by a Python script using CATIA and information from the Product Data Management system (PDM), SmarTeam. The second, the Collision Analysis Report (CAR) is an Excel table listing the critical distances between a selection of components and their surroundings using the DMU and SmarTeam. SmarTeam along with the DMU and the CAR reduces the risk of design iteration, increases the efficiency of the designers and promotes the communication within the project teams.

A materials selection study for composite materials in the concurrent engineering environment is presented in this chapter. Materials selection process is an important activity in product design and nowadays, materials selection has been performed with help of various tools and techniques. Materials selection for composites is a tedious task because, unlike homogeneous materials like polymer, ceramics, and metal, it involves consideration of different matrix and reinforcement systems. Under the umbrella of concurrent engineering, many materials selection systems have been developed using computer software packages like expert system, analytical hierarchy process, neural network, and fuzzy logics. However, majority of the computerized materials selection system is still far from commercialization and the most successful materials selection is attributed to Cambridge engineering selector (CES) developed by Ashby and his coworkers. The need to upgrade research findings related to materials selection for composites to another level becomes a priority. In this chapter, a review of different materials selection system for composites under concurrent engineering environment is presented.

This paper proposes a group decision-making process by using multi-objective programming to address three-dimensional concurrent engineering (3D-CE) problems involving product, process and supply chain design. This paper uses opinion of decision makers to evaluate of the candidate suppliers and to determine importance of criteria by considering lack knowledge/information in the early design stages. For identifying impact of the lack knowledge/information on selecting the best configuration of product design, assembly/manufacturing process and suppliers of components, a numerical example is represented for two states of intuitionistic fuzzy and fuzzy. The evaluation showed that the configuration selected for two states are completely different.

Customized/personalized products are gaining more shares in today's product market. Such products need collective efforts from consumers, manufacturers and third parties. On the other side, the Internet of Things (IoT) with pervasive sensing/actuating/networking ability greatly facilitates remote operation of manufacturing activities and efficient collaboration among stakeholders. This provides great opportunities to the above demand. Thus we propose a full-connection model of product lifecycle in the IoT-enabled cloud manufacturing environment. The model uses social networks to connect multiple parties and facilitate open innovations, IoT to glue physical space to cyber space and cloud manufacturing to provide various elastic services, so that the on-demand workspace, interaction, information sharing or collective problem solving are enabled. We also propose a supporting infrastructure for this model using the latest information and communication technologies. Finally, we present a RFID (Radio-frequency identification) enabled production system for customized/personalized products with the ability to enable a new paradigm of “dynamic processes and close collaborations among different roles” and secure robust production.