This paper presents a precise market model for a well-defined class of distributed configuration design problems. Given a design problem, the model defines a computational economy to allocate basic resources to agents participating in the design. The result of running these "design economies" constitutes the market solution to the original problem. After defining the configuration design framework, I describe the mapping to computational economies and our results to date. For some simple examples, the system can produce good designs relatively quickly. However, analysis shows that the design economies are not guaranteed to find optimal designs, and we identify and discuss some of the major pitfalls. Despite known shortcomings and limited explorations thus far, the market model offers a useful conceptual viewpoint for analyzing distributed design problems.

: A core concept in discussions about technological support for knowledge management is the Corporate Memory. A Corporate or Organizational Memory can be characterized as a comprehensive computer system which captures a company's accumulated know-how and other knowledge assets and makes them available to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge-intensive work processes. The successful development of such a system requires a careful analysis of established work practices and available information-technology (IT) infrastructure. This is essential for providing a cost-effective solution which will be accepted by the users and can be evolved in the future. The current paper compares and summarizes our experiences from three case studies on Corporate Memories for supporting various aspects in the product life-cycles of three European corporations. Based on the conducted analyses and prototypical implementations, we sketch a general framework for the development methodology, arc...

Managing the software development and maintenance process has been identified as a great challenge for several years. Software processes are highly dynamic and can only rarely be planned completely in advance. Dynamic task nets take this into account. They are built and modified incrementally as a software process is executed. Dynamic task nets have been designed to solve important problems of process dynamics, including product-dependent structural evolution, feedbacks, and concurrent engineering. In order to describe editing and enactment (and their interaction) in a uniform way, task nets are formally defined by means of a programmed graph rewriting system.

: Systems in which semi-autonomous problem solving agents communicate and cooperate with one another represent an exciting vision of future computing environments. However, if this vision is ever going to result in commercially viable systems then consideration must be given to the large software base which exists within many organisations. Success requires the ability to incorporate pre-existing systems alongside purpose built agents in a cooperating community. This requirement is vital because the former represent a substantial resource investment which companies cannot afford to consign to the scrap heap. This paper reports on our experiences of constructing cooperating communities which contain elements which were pre-existing and some which were developed specifically for incorporation into an integrated environment. The general purpose framework of ARCHON (ARchitecture for Cooperative Heterogeneous ON-line systems) provides the underlying technology which facilitates cooperative ...

this paper (cf. [48] for details).

This document characterizes the structuring of interactive groupware applications according to various aspects of group activity and group orientation. The overall framework is used to systematize the relationship between groupware application needs and underlying distribution and communication support. The reviewing criteria, such as group dynamics, scaling and robustness requirements, are discussed within the context of each type of application. Furthermore, a classification of groupware platforms is proposed based on a combination of general characteristics, the type of underlying support and the level at which it is provided. A selection of existing generic groupware platforms is presented illustrating the variety of design approaches and proposed features. Finally, this study is used to extract a number of issues which are considered to be important to enable further development of collaborative applications. Future directions of research are discussed highlighting the potential benefits of group-oriented systems for supporting the construction of collaborative applications.

Viewing concurrent design as processes of collaboration, coordination and co-decision making within and between cross-functional teams, we argue that an appropriate integration of information sharing and activity synchronization approaches is necessary and beneficial for a concurrent design support environment. This paper presents our approach to model concurrent design processes. We address support of information sharing and activity synchronization within a team and between teams. The prototype system SCOPE integrates process support technologies into a cooperative work environment. It provides support for specification, modification monitoring, and execution of session-based collaborative processes. 1 Introduction The traditional procedure in industry for designing a product is the implementation of sequential design, often referred to as the "over-the-wall" approach. In recent years, Concurrent Engineering (CE) has become a widely accepted concept and is regarded as an excellent...

Large engineering design projects involve many different disciplines each with their own area of concern and expertise. A large amount of information (design data and knowledge) is processed and exchanged among such disciplines, and even within each discipline. Traditional computer environments cannot cope easily with such complex situations. Hence new approaches must be sought. This paper presents an experimental design environment organized as a population of asynchronous cognitive agents. Issues about the general architecture, the internal structure of an agent and inter-agent communication mechanism are discussed. A prototype including a number of independent agents is then presented and demonstrated on a small mechanical design. Keywords Cognitive Agents, Engineering Design Knowledge, CAD, Mechanical Design. 1 INTRODUCTION Large engineering design projects require the cooperation of multidisciplinary design teams using sophisticated and powerful engineering tools such as comme...

Concurrent Design (CD) involves collaboration, coordination, and information-based co-decision making within a potentially distributed multifunctional team. This paper shows that a generic process-centered environment kernel, based on fine grain and decision-oriented task modeling, using customizable product models, providing capabilities for task model refinement at run time, and true collaboration support, is a good candidate for building dedicated computer aided CD environments. DOTS ('Decision-Oriented Task Support'), a Java prototype of such a generic environment kernel, is described in this paper and its usage in the CD application domain is discussed. 1 Introduction The research described in this paper deals with computer support for Concurrent Design (CD), i.e., for the early phases of the Concurrent Engineering process. During CD, multifunctional teams, possibly distributed in time and space, work together for designing some product. In such a setting an efficient support fo...

Concurrent Engineering supports the cooperation of teams coming from different phases of the engineering process. Mutual understanding between these crossfunctional teams is essential for successful cooperation. One obstacle for mutual understanding is the use of different languages, notations, and representations within different phases of the engineering process. Fine-grained relationships between documents and parts of documents are demanded as well as intelligent visualizations techniques.