A computational team approach for large-scale design problems

大型工程设计的一个主要挑战是由不同团队处理的设计子问题之间的耦合效应。例如，在汽车设计中，底盘团队的设计决策会影响悬架团队的设计决策，反之亦然。当一个团队无意中做出的设计决策会影响另一个团队的设计绩效时，情况会变得更糟。面对这一挑战，本研究计划打算提出一种计算团队方法，简化分解和协调活动，以正式解决大规模设计问题。这个简化的过程应该促进不同的团队协同工作，以获得最佳的设计结果。通过本研究，目前工程设计中的协调实践可以从临时的方式转变为系统的方式。这种转变可以促进团队之间的合作，从而可靠而高效地产生整体设计结果。然后，这项研究的结果可以帮助公司在多学科、分布式的设计环境中生产出更迷人的产品。最终，指导团队设计活动的计算机软件的开发使大型工程公司受益成为可能。

One major challenge in large-scale engineering design stems from the coupling effect among design sub-problems that are handled by different teams.  For instance, in automobile design, design decisions from a chassis team can affect design decisions from a suspension team and vice versa.  Situations become even worse when one team unintentionally makes design decisions that will deteriorate the design performance of another team.  Facing this challenge, this research program intends to propose a computational team approach that streamlines the decomposition and coordination activities to formally address large-scale design problems.  This streamlined process should facilitate different teams to work synergistically for optimal design results.From this research, current coordination practice in engineering design can be shifted from an ad-hoc manner to a systematic approach.  This shift can facilitate the cooperation of teams to produce overall design results reliably and efficiently.  Then, the results from this research can assist a company in producing more fascinating products in a multidisciplinary, distributed design environment.  Ultimately, the development of computer software that guides team design activities becomes possible to benefit large engineering companies.