A scheduling approach for design activities in concurrent engineering

This paper presents an optimization scheduling approach for concurrent design projects, in which activities maybe executed in more than one operating mode and renewable as well as nonrenewable resources exist. Research on the development of scheduling approach for concurrent scheduling is expected to shorten development lead time, minimize cost, and eliminate unnecessary redesign periods. In this paper, an integrated criterion function is proposed to ensure optimal concurrent scheduling and effective utilization of resources along with fluent delivery of information. In the criterion function, some key factors such as time order, resources, lead time and overlapping time of activities, which can make concurrent activities be executed successfully, are taken into account adequately. Besides, two cruxes in concurrent engineering-role allocation, prerelease, and feedback revision process are discussed in detail. The example is a part of a certain product development process, and the scheduling results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is feasible.