Scheduling design activities with a pull system approach

The design process can be considered as a series of design phases. Each design phase can be further divided into number of design activities. In the network of design activities, the design activities generate information which is used by the succeeding activities. Since importance of the input information available from different activities changes with respect to the requirement of the design activities, a pull system approach for the management of design activities is proposed. Due to the concurrent consideration of many factors in the design process, it is required that the design activities are performed by teams of experts. In addition to the multiple resource requirement, the uncertainty in the weights and duration of design activities makes the problem of scheduling design activities complex. A heuristic algorithm is proposed to solve the problem considered in this paper.