Review of Intelligent Software Architectures for the Development of An Intelligent Decision Support System for Design Process Planning in Concurrent Engineering

Concurrent engineering (CE) is a strategy that attempts to process as many product development tasks in parallel and incorporate relevant life-cycle attributes as early as possible in the design phase in an effort to reduce the duration of design projects, save development costs, and provide better quality products. The CE environment is characterized by a high degree of distributed cognitive processing in the form of product development team structures. The distribution of appropriate knowledge to members of these teams and other participants in the design process for the purpose of supporting management and planning decisions is a considerably complex problem. New approaches and tools based on artificial intelligence methodologies are needed to deal with this level of complexity in coordinating knowledge resources. This paper reviews a number of potential candidates for an intelligent software architecture that can represent this type of problem as well as support the knowledge handling necessary to solve such problems. The selection of an appropriate architecture will support the development of an intelligent information system that is able to mimic human cognitive processes as the basic tool for providing decision-making support for planning and controlling a CE design process.