Concurrent engineering: decomposition and scheduling of design activities

Design of complex products or large scale systems involves hundreds of resources (designers, analysts, computers, software systems, and procedures) and thousands of design activities. In this paper, a methodology is presented for decomposition of the design task into activities and modules. The methodology is based or clustering of design activities into groups that allow effective organization on resources required in the design process. A knowledge-based approach is used for managing design activities. The system performs analysis aiming at exploring concurrency and reducing the design project makespan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]; Copyright of International Journal of Production Research is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)