Modeling Uncertainty Reduction in Concurrent Engineering Design Teams

Abstract

The design process can be viewed as a series of actions for reducing uncertainty in product or system design specifications. At the beginning of the design process, uncertainty is high because the design space has yet to be explored and decisions have not been made. This uncertainty contributes to design risk, risk due to the engineer’s lack of knowledge and/or information. In design teams, design risk takes on the added dimension of lack of group awareness about the state of knowledge of each team member. To better understand and capture uncertainty inherent in early design, we have developed a methodology to model design evolution in concurrent design teams. The representation is a directed graph that represents the state of a design over time. In this paper we describe our modeling methodology and present a case study of two different design teams. We present the results of modeling a part of the design process. Then we show how the model can be analyzed to understand how information and knowledge transfer was used to make decisions and reduce uncertainty and design risk.