• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.32-49
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• 1996

An approach to providing computational support for concurrent design is discussed in the context of an automobile wiring harness design problem. Key issues include the development of an architecture that supports collaboration among specialists, the development of hierarchical representations that capture different characteristics of the design, and decomposition of tasks to achieve a tradeoff between efficiency and robustness of the system. We present an architecture in which the main design tasks are supported by agents-asynchronous and semi-autonomous modules that automate routine design tasks and provide specialized interfaces for working on particular aspects of the design. The agent communication and coordination mechanisms permit members of an engineering team to work concurrently, at different levels of detail and of different versions of the design. The design is represented hierarchically, with detailed models maintained by the participating agents. In conjunction with the architecture and design representations, issues pertaining to the exchange of information among different views of the design, management of dependencies and constraints, and propagation of design changes are discussed.