SHARE: A Scalable Framework and Methodology for Concurrent Engineering

SHARE: A Scalable Framework and Methodology for Concurrent Engineering

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Table of Contents:

  1. Principal Investigator.
  2. Productivity Measures.
  3. Summary of Objectives and Approach.
  4. Detailed Summary of Technical Progress.
  5. Transitions and DOD Interactions.
  6. Software and Hardware Prototypes.
  7. List of Publications.
  8. Invited and Contributed Presentations.
  9. Honors, Prizes or Awards Received.
  10. Project personnel promotions obtained.
  11. Project Staff.
  12. Misc Hypermedia URL.
  13. Keywords.

Principal Investigator.

Productivity Measures.

Summary of Objectives and Approach.

The objective of this work is to help teams of engineers achieve a shared understanding of their designs and design processes, using agent-based computational tools and services for communication, collaboration, analysis, and synthesis.

    The approach is based on developing:
  1. Sharable design representations that encompass decisions and rationale linked to the design artifact
  2. A distributed architecture that enables agents (human and computational) to communicate and cooperate in solving engineering problems
  3. Incremental, interactive concurrent engineering tools for analysis and synthesis
As the SHARE tools and environment are developed, they are tested on industry-sponsored design projects. Their impact on the design process is analyzed to assess their effectiveness and provide a basis for models of concurrent design and redesign processes.

Detailed Summary of Technical Progress.

  1. A second edition of the SHARE environment has been developed and tested by engineering design teams. Supporting files for each project were captured on laptop computers and published on CDROMs and the World Wide Web, and analyzed to study design processes and design re-use. Exercising SHARE in real design activity continues to guide development of the next generation environment.
  2. The SHARE work on agent-based software for design collaboration has continued through a joint project with Lockheed on cable harness design and through collaboration with the SHADE project (DAAA 15-91-C0104) to develop agents that share models for engineering analysis. Share is also collaborating with Lockheed and Sandia National Laboratories to develop an agile, Internet-based service for design and manufacturing.
  3. The SHARE team has joined other MADE projects in MADEFAST to collaboratively design an infrared seeker prototype. The design team uses SHARE collaboration tools to facilitate communications and sharing of information over the Internet.
  4. The SHARE environment was used by 15 teams working on industry-sponsored projects. The environment facilitated sharing of multimedia information via the World Wide Web and email. Design documents were shared and collected for study. Experiments in using WAIS and DEDAL to navigate these documents have demonstrated decreases in information access times and increased effectiveness of the re-design process.
  5. A decision management system, Redux', was integrated and tested with NEXT-LINK, a multi-agent, cable harness design system built in collaboration with Lockheed. Redux' keeps track of goals, dependencies, contingencies, conflicts and rationale for decisions in a collaborative design project. One of the most important results has been the detection of opportunities to improve a design that would typically have been lost.
  6. SHARE and Lockheed have developed ACaPS, an Internet-based service for design and manufacture of wire harness assemblies. ACAPS has been used internally by Lockheed for production runs and will be used by Sandia National Laboratories in August 1994.
  7. In cooperation with the SHADE project, agents were constructed for controls, dynamics and structural analysis. Agents incorporate commercial software (e.g., Matlab/Simulink), knowledge-based systems shells and solid modelers. They exploit ontologies for knowledge sharing and the KQML Application Programming Interface for communicating via multiple protocols and transport mechanisms.

Transitions and DOD Interactions.

  1. 17 different industrial groups (FMC, Hughes, Peterbuilt, Schick, Baxter, Stanford Children's Hospital, Stanford Medical School, NASA, Nikon, GM, DEC, Western Digital, 3M, CapSnap, Western Sky, AT&T, DVI, Boeing) participated in the SHARE testbed environment. 3M, NASA and Hughes corresponded regularly with design teams via SHARE. Electronic documents were delivered to industrial sponsors for redesign and published as a design library on the World Wide Web.
  2. Collaboration continues between SHARE and NASA Ames' DEDAL project, including sharing of design records captured under SHARE. EIT is transforming DEDAL for question-based indexing of semi-structured information on the Internet.
  3. In ACaPS, Lockheed and SHARE are transforming Lockheed's cable harness production facility into an agile service over the Internet.
  4. In MADEFAST, SHARE tools are being used for collaboration with Rockwell Palo Alto Research Labs, Texas Instruments, Hughes, the University of Utah, Carnegie Mellon University and Michigan State University.

Software and Hardware Prototypes.

Preliminary versions of Xwindow-based SHARE tools have been distributed to various Internet sites, including ARPA MADEFAST participants.

  1. StoryBoard - a MIME multimedia Email composer and viewer
  2. Mmphone - a MIME and WWW based multimedia phone service for Internet based desktop conference initiation and setup
  3. MediaKit - a WWW service for distributing audio and video movies on-demand over the Internet using WWW
  4. Shared Mosaic - a WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See) collaboration facility in Mosaic, WWW browser.
  5. ABSML - A Better Structured Markup Language and its parsers/filters define an HTML superset that additionally encodes semantic and graphical(2D) information.

List of Publications.

  1. G.Toye, M.Cutkosky, L.J.Leifer, J.M.Tenenbaum and J.Glicksman, "SHARE: A Methodology and Environment for Collaborative Product Development," to appear in Int. J. of Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems, 1994. Abstract available

  2. H.Park, M.Cutkosky, A.B.Conru and S-H. Lee, "An Agent-Based Approach to Concurrent Cable Harness Design," Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, Vol. 8, 1994, pp. 45-61. Abstract available

  3. C.Petrie, M.Cutkosky and H.Park, "Design Space Navigation," Proceedings of Third Int. Conf. on AI in Design, August 1994, Lausanne, Switzerland. Abstract available

  4. G.Olsen, M.Cutkosky and J.M.Tenenbaum and T.R.Gruber, "Collaborative Engineering based on Knowledge Sharing Agreements," to be presented at the 1994 ASME Engineering Database Symposium. Abstract available

  5. S. Kambhampati, M. R. Cutkosky, J. M. Tenenbaum and S-H Lee, "Integrating General Purpose Planners and Specialized Reasoners: Case Study of a Hybrid Planning Architecture," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics,, Vol. 23, No. 6, November/December, 1993, pp. 1503-1518. Abstract available

  6. A.Conru and M.Cutkosky, "Computational Support for Interactive Cable Harness Routing and Design," Advances in Design Automation, DE-Vol 65-1, Proceedings of the 1993 ASME Design Automation Conf., Albuquerque, NM., Sept 19-22, 1993, pp. 551-558. Abstract available

  7. V.Kumar, J.Glicksman, G.A.Kramer, "A SHAREd Web To Support Design Teams," Proceedings of IEEE Third Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, April 17-19, 1994, Morgantown, WV. Abstract available

  8. Baudin, Catherine; Kedar, Smadar; Underwood, Jody G.; Baya, Vinod; "Question-based Acquisition of Conceptual Indices for Multimedia Design Documentation" , In proceedings of the 11th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence AAAI-93, Washington D.C., pp 452-458, July 1993.

  9. Baudin, Catherine; Underwood, Jody G.; Baya, Vinod; "Using Device Models to Facilitate the Retrieval of Multimedia Design Information" , In proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Chambery, France, pp 1237-1243, August 29-September 2,1993.

Invited and Contributed Presentations.

  1. ISAT Demonstration: An invited presentation of the MadeFast project was given by on August 26 by M. Cutkosky and G. Toye at the ARPA meeting in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
  2. Knowledge Capture Using Framemaker Presented By Stanford Center For Design Research: A presentation was given by G. Toye and B. Luehrs to the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco and Silicon Valley Chapters on December 16, 1993 on how electro-mechanical systems designers are using FrameMaker as a document preparation tool and as an electronic design notebook. FrameMaker templates have been designed to help preserve the author's intents in notebook documents. Captured design information is then shared for use in redesign and other related design efforts. To do this on a global scale, these design documents are converted from Frame format into World-Wide-Web HTML (HyperText Markup Language) format. The files are WAIS (Wide Area Information Service) indexed so that they can be actively searched and accessed from anywhere in the world via the Internet.

Honors, Prizes or Awards Received.

Project Personnel Promotions Obtained.

Project Staff.


  1. Larry Leifer     - Professor, PI, CDR Director

  2. Mark Cutkosky     - Associate Professor, PI


  3. Charles Petrie     - Research Associate

  4. George Toye     - Associate Director

  5. Andrew Conru - Graduate Student
  6. Padmanabh Dabke - Graduate Student
  7. Robert Frost - Graduate Student
  8. Priscilla Chui-Yee Fung - Graduate Student
  9. Jack Hong - Graduate Student
  10. Brian Luehrs - Graduate Student
  11. Greg Olsen - Graduate Student
  12. Shinji Sato - Graduate Student
  13. Sian Tan - Graduate Student
  14. James Joseph Wagner - Graduate Student
  15. Teresa Webster - Graduate Student

  16. Larry Pfeffer - Consultant

Misc Hypermedia.

  1. DEDAL
  2. ICM
  3. Video tapes of all ME210 presentations have been made. In addition, CD-ROMs containing all ME210 design documentation are now available.
  4. MADEFAST
  5. ME210 - Mechatronic Systems Design and Methodology
  6. SHADE
  7. All the MADEFAST particpants cite CDR's home pages (Utah, CMU, MSU, EIT etc.)

Keywords.

  1. ABSML
  2. ACaPS
  3. DEDAL
  4. FirstLink
  5. GCDK
  6. ICM
  7. ISAT
  8. MADE
  9. MADEFAST
  10. ME210
  11. MediaKit
  12. Mmphone
  13. NextLink
  14. REDUX
  15. SHADE
  16. SHARE
  17. StoryBoard