A product data dependencies network to support conflict resolution in design processes

It is characteristic of collaborative engineering design that precedence relationships among design activities contain information flow conflicts. Indeed, due to multi-actors interaction, conflicts can emerge from disagreements between designers about proposed designs. Therefore, a critical element of collaborative design would be conflict resolution. This paper presents a methodology to identify the conflict resolution team and to evaluate the impact of a selected solution on the product data as well as on the process organisation. The approach is based on product data dependencies network. This network is composed of the handled data and the dependency links between them; two qualification dependency measures are introduced to manage these dependencies. In order to identify this network, a traceability model to track the design process is proposed. Finally, a protocol to manage the conflict resolution negotiation is discussed