On the Development of a Computing Infrastructure that Facilitates IPPD from a Decision-Based Perspective

Presented at the 1st AIAA Aircraft Engineering, Technology, and Operations Congress, Anaheim, CA, September 19-21, 1995.Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD) embodies the simultaneous application of both system and quality engineering methods throughout iterative design processes. The use of IPPD results in the time-conscious, cost-saving development of engineering systems. A computing infrastructure called IMAGE is designed to implement IPPD from a decision-based perspective. IMAGE has four components: designer activities, available assets, agent collaboration, and a computing architecture. IMAGE captures a designer's activities through a timeline partitioning scheme, problem formulation and solution, and comprehensive information management. To support these activities, IMAGE incorporates design resources through the use of agents. Agents are a critical computational enabling technology that provide accountable mechanisms for resource collaboration in an integrated computing environment