Design automation and engineering organization structures

Design automation over the years has taken many forms. Engineering projects of every description have been targeted by computer specialists as systems which might benefit from automation. Today, several major firms are marketing CAD/CAM systems in a big way. Electrical design workstations and mechanical part workstations and data bases have been most successful and these companies are continually refining and improving their systems looking towards the future. Though there are many consulting firms available to assist in the automation of an interested engineering organization, many project managers still resist the automation tide. This paper is an exploration of several areas which will need to be addressed in the years to come if automation is to be successfully applied to even the most complex of engineering undertakings. The exploration is facilitated through the elucidation of important structures which appear in engineering organizations. The hope is that through the understanding of these implicit structures, computational systems can be built which reflect these structures and thereby provide additional project coherence. The primary areas affected are management, verification, inter-module communication and integration. This work is continuing under the leadership of Dr. F.B. Thompson at the California Institute of Technology