On the basis of the user requirements the definition of the needed software system and methods have been made. The CODESCO product consists of three components:
- the communication module,
- the decision support module and
- the non-software supporting methods and tools.
In this presentation the software components (communication module and decision support module) will be described. The Decision Support Module is supporting decision making for two typical decision types which have to be made continuously throughout the product development process: What-If-Decisions: to estimate what the impact of changes in the specification of a product will be. Select-Decisions: to accept or reject a technical solution on certain criteria. Both types of decisions are supported by using the methodology of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR). This method consists of searching for similar cases and providing them to the user. Through the adaptation of the similar case a new solution for the problem can be developed. The new case is then stored in the database. The Communication Module supports the communication between the project manager, team members and non team members of the company about the current status of a product development project and gives them access to the relevant information and documents. The communication module can be seen as 'team information system' with a project 'homepage' as its basis. In this approach several new achievements are realised. The introduction of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) in a Concurrent Engineering (CE)environment is unique as well as using CBR for What-If analysis. Further the communication module is developed specific for the CE environment. The dashboard contains libraries to display technical and specific product development information as well as financial and scheduling data which is stored in a data warehouse in which data can be inserted as well.
Project URL: http://www.biba.uni-bremen.de/projects/CODESCO/