Framework for modeling dependencies in collaborative engineering processes

This article describes an engineering process representation and modeling tool. The approach is especially suitable for describing large-scale, mature design processes involving numerous tasks, same of which may be performed by automated computer agents. The underlying representation is a graph of information-processing units with explicitly defined input and output feature elements. We show that this representation is more complete than those used in previous process modeling approaches and overcomes some of their limitations when dealing with design processes involving dependencies at multiple levels of detail. The representation is combined with rules for automatically operating upon the graph to preserve consistency when traversing to higher or lower levels of detail.