Title: Modelling interactions to support and manage collaborative decision-making processes in design situations

Authors: Eric Bonjour, Farouk Belkadi, Nadege Troussier, Maryvonne Dulmet

Addresses: Automatic Control and Micro-Mechatronic Systems Department, FEMTO-ST Institute – UMR CNRS 6174, ENSMM, UFC, UTBM, 24, rue Alain Savary, 25000 Besancon, France. ' Departement GSM, CNRS UMR6253 Roberval, Universite de Technologie de Compiegne, Centre Pierre Guillaumat, BP 60319, Rue du Docteur Schweitzer, 60203 Compiegne, France. ' Departement GSM, CNRS UMR6253 Roberval, Universite de Technologie de Compiegne, Centre Pierre Guillaumat, BP 60319, Rue du Docteur Schweitzer, 60203 Compiegne, France. ' Automatic Control and Micro-Mechatronic Systems Department, FEMTO-ST Institute – UMR CNRS 6174, ENSMM, UFC, UTBM, 24, rue Alain Savary, 25000 Besancon, France

Abstract: To cope with the increasing complexity of products, new product development (NPD) projects require the involvement of several designers coming from various functional departments. Designers| decisions imply modifications on different objects and are likely to affect the decision-making of other designers. Two kinds of collaborative activities are strongly interrelated: technical ones that result in decisions regarding the product definition and organisational ones that concern the project organisation. In this paper, we aim at developing a new conceptual framework for modelling, managing and tracking decision-making processes that are knowledge-intensive and collaborative. This framework intends to help designers to support both technical and organisational decisions. Its originality comes from the concepts of |specific role| and |action plan| that enhance the recursive modelling of activities and are valuable at different detail levels of the decision-making processes: project, team and individual levels. Specific decision-making models and an industrial case study illustrate the relevance of the proposed framework.

Keywords: collaborative design; decision making; interaction modelling; design situations; collaboration; knowledge management; information management; collaboration; design decisions; new product development; NPD; product design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2009.028048

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2009 Vol.36 No.3/4, pp.259 - 271

Published online: 02 Sep 2009 *

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