Engineering change management and decision-making assistance using software agent

Engineering change management of mechanical products is a critical task which poses many challenges for industrials. Both the integration of the various tools intervening in the life cycle of a product and the management of the communication between the various multidisciplinary teams working on a product are difficult tasks. The communication between disciplines is currently performed mostly using message exchange. The approval process of an engineering change can be achieved only if experts representing the various disciplines meet and agree on the change, which can require a lot of time. This paper proposes an agent-based approach that ensures the propagation of an engineering change towards the external systems concerned. It also checks if the engineering change proposed for a mechanical product does not create any inconsistency with the constraints from the various disciplines involved. Each discipline is represented by an expert agent. When an inconsistency is discovered, a negotiation process is launched.