Cost-constrained planning for concurrency satisfaction

Abstract

Concurrent engineering, the forefront of an incoming technological change, is gaining strong interest in industry. It can achieve what traditional engineering systems cannot: the reduction in time and money needed for product design and manufacture. However, the concurrent strategy that considers a number of different life-cycle attributes might increase the complexity of the design process and make it more difficult to manage. Introduction of various life-cycle attributes in various stages of product design is termed concurrency satisfaction. The aim of this paper is to introduce a methodology for planning for concurrency satisfaction. The methodology is based on deduction graphs and the optimal concurrency plan is arrived at by applying a 0-1 integer programming technique. The presented methodology is illustrated with examples.