An Agent-Oriented Model of a Dynamic Engineering Design Process

One way to make engineering design effective and efficient is to make its processes flexible i.e. self-adjusting, self-configuring, and self-optimizing at run time. This paper presents the descriptive part of the Dynamic Engineering Design Process (DEDP) modelling framework developed in the PSI project. The project aims to build a software tool to assist managers to analyse and enhance the productivity of the DEDPs through process simulations. The framework incorporates the models of teams and actors, tasks and activities as well as design artefacts as the major interrelated parts. DEDPs are modelled as weakly defined flows of tasks and atomic activities that may only “become apparent” at run time because of several presented dynamic factors. The processes are self-formed through the mechanisms of collaboration in the dynamic team of actors. These mechanisms are based on contracting negotiations. DEDP productivity is assessed by the Units of Welfare collected by the multi-agent system that models the design team. The models of the framework are formalized in the family of PSI ontologies.