Team/Design: an object-based system for concurrent engineering

Abstract

Team/Design is an object-oriented, knowledge-based software tool developed for concurrent engineering design of both complex and simple systems. It enhances design decision-making by enabling consideration of and trade off among multiple design goals, specifications and constraints, and selection among alternatives to create the total quality product. The original impetus behind the development of Team/Design was the recognition of the need to create a flexible, effective design modeling and decision support system for concurrent engineering/system engineering. The method enhances the total quality (eg., cost performance, supportability, producibility, schedule) of the resulting product while increasing the efficiency of the design process. Object-oriented user interface techniques provide a natural approach to enable systems engineers and other design engineers to model and analyze an early-stage design from the concurrent engineering viewpoint. The development of Team/Design has shown the object-oriented, methodology to be viable for concurrent engineering decision support.<>