CAREER: Design and Implementation of a Virtual Product Development Environment

该学院早期职业发展(CALEAR)奖侧重于协作产品开发，将研究和教育相结合，以(1)探索全球分散的协作工程师可以设计和开发世界级产品的信息基础，以及(2)建立一个全球工程师可以实时参与和开发产品的框架。信息基金会将研究一种基于互联网的工程信息模型，该模型将共享公共和私人信息，以实现一个集成的多伙伴关系环境，重点是如何以一致的方式安全地共享合作者的私人信息。一旦建立了信息基础，将开发一个分布式决策支持框架，该框架将集成合作伙伴资格预审、合作伙伴冲突的动态分析和合作伙伴冲突解决的谈判。在此模型和框架的基础上，实现了一个虚拟产品开发环境(VPDE)原型系统。VPDE将演示企业在协同环境中实现产品开发的过程。VPDE原型系统将包括基于互联网的信息系统、基于互联网的合作伙伴资格预审、基于互联网的冲突分析和基于互联网的合作伙伴谈判模块。教育计划的重点是将VPDE转化为教学版本，将拟议研究的结果与本科生和研究生教育相结合。这也将是少数族裔外展教育计划的载体，无论是在本科生层面上，还是在劳动力培训方面。将探索各种“设计主动学习方法”，以产生基于互联网的练习，以展示工程信息系统和分布式决策支持系统在协作产品开发中的作用。还将开发一个关于分布式信息系统的在线研究生课程。

This Faculty Early Career Development (Career) award focuses on Collaborative Product Development, combining research and education to (1) explore the information foundation in which globally distributed, collaborating engineers can design and develop world-class products and (2) develop a framework in which global engineers can participate and develop products in a real time basis. The information foundation will investigate an Internet based engineering information model that will share public and private information to achieve an integrated multi-partnership environment with focus on how to securely share collaborator's private information in a consistent way. Once the information foundation is established, a distributed decision support framework will be developed that will integrate partner pre-qualification, dynamic analysis of partner's conflict and negotiation for partners' conflicts resolution. Based on the model and the framework developed, a Virtual Product Development Environment (VPDE), a prototype system will be implemented. VPDE will illustrate the procedure for enterprises to realize product development in a collaborative environment. The VPDE prototype system will include an Internet based information system, Internet based partner pre-qualification, Internet based Conflict Analysis and Internet based Partner negotiation modules. The education plan focuses on translating the VPDE into an instructional version that will integrate the outcomes of the proposed research with undergraduate and graduate education. This will also be a vehicle for minority outreach education programs, both at the undergraduate level and for workforce training. Various "designing active learning methodologies" will be explored to generate Internet-based exercises to demonstrate the role of engineering information systems and distributed decision support systems in collaborative product development. An online graduate course on Distributed Information System will also be developed.