A negotiation methodology for multidisciplinary collaborative product design

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Highlights

  • Based on the in-depth analysis of negotiation characteristics in MCD, a novel negotiation method for MCD is proposed.

  • An effective negotiation strategy to resolve the conflicts among multiple disciplines is given.

  • A new negotiation model is given by introducing concepts of concession, satisfaction degree and strategy power exponent.

  • Two types of satisfaction degree functions and the mapping method among multiple domains are given.

  • Negotiation process and system framework are designed to assist multiple disciplines rapidly reach a compromise solution.

Abstract

The collaborative design of a complicated mechanical product often involves conflicting multidisciplinary objectives, thus one key problem is conflict resolution and coordination among the different disciplines. Since the characteristics such as cooperative competition, professional dependence, compromise, overall utility and so on exist in multidisciplinary collaborative design (MCD), an effective way to gradually eliminate the conflicts among the multiple disciplines and reach an agreement is the negotiation by which a compromise solution that satisfies all parties is got. By comprehensively analyzing the characteristics in MCD and considering the benefit equilibrium among discipline individuals and team, a negotiation strategy is presented, which maximize the union satisfaction degree of system overall objective under the premise of ensuring the higher satisfaction degree level of each discipline’s local objective. A design action of a discipline is abstractly expressed as a concession in the negotiation strategy, and a negotiation model used for MCD is generated by establishing the relation between concession and satisfaction degree. By the relation between satisfaction degree and objective function, the mapping relationship between satisfaction degree domain and physical domain is built to get the design solution. A negotiation process is planned, and a negotiation system framework is designed to support the negotiation among multiple disciplines and assist the different disciplines rapidly reach a consistent compromise solution. A design example of automotive friction clutch is given to illustrate the proposed method.

Introduction

The complicated mechanical product design often involves the multidisciplinary performance requirements, and needs the collaborative work of designers from different disciplines. Different disciplines concerned about different aspects of product, and their objectives to be achieved are different. Each discipline makes product design with its own professional knowledge and experience to satisfy its objective. Because they concern the different aspects of the same product, the interacting relationships among different disciplines must exist. Some discipline’s design action not only affects its own goal, but also affects the other disciplines’ goals, thus it is hard to avoid conflicts among different disciplines. One key problem of MCD is the coordination among multiple disciplines’ objectives, and its a common problem in product design.

Single-level approach and bi-level approaches are widely used approaches in MCD. Single-level approach integrates all the decision-making responsibilities into a single system-level team which handles interdisciplinary communication, interaction and coordination. The other disciplinary teams are only responsible for providing disciplinary analyses. It requires solution and coordination of a system level encompassing at least all the coupling variables and this soon becomes too complex to be solvable [1], [2], [3], [4]. Bi-level approaches [5], [6], [7] decompose the multidisciplinary problem into a set of discipline level sub-problems and one system level problem, and disciplinary teams are assigned the authority to make local decisions and solve sub-problems concurrently, but bi-level approaches require iterations among system level and disciplinary levels, the theoretical convergence remains an open question [8]. In addition, as an effective means of handling conflict, game theory is also for coordination and resolution of conflicts in MCD. Game theory is applied to model the interactions among multidisciplinary engineering teams’ decision-making and three kinds of protocols such as cooperative, non-cooperative and leader/follower are proposed [9], [10], [11]. The game theory was successfully applied in the multiple objective optimization design of mechanical product [12], [13]. A game theory model that provides insights into conditions when two engineers collaborate on a design project which has both team and individual components was proposed [14].

In practice, the coordination among multiple objectives in MCD is not entirely an accurate mathematical problem, instead, a flexible compromise decision problem involving subjective and objective factors of multiple disciplines. To the design problem involving multiple conflicting objectives in MCD, there is generally no absolute optimal solution, only exists satisfactory solution. Each discipline is more willing to make decisions independently within its own disciplines. The MCD is essentially a negotiation problem. Each discipline is a part of design team and wants its own utility as good as possible, and meanwhile is willing to make a concession to improve the overall utility. This is an iterative negotiation process. Through negotiation, multiple disciplines resolve the conflicts gradually and reach consensus eventually, the coordination among the disciplinary local goals and the team’s overall goal is achieved, and the compromise solution that all parties are satisfied is got.

Negotiation was an effective approach for coordination and resolution of conflicts [15]. Complex design involves trade-offs and teamwork. To make collaborative design decisions, designers must negotiate with each other to resolve their discrepancies through exploring the design space, generating new ideas and compromising for agreement [16]. A negotiation method to resolve goal conflicts on the basis of constructing satisfaction degree function and adopting equivalent concession was discussed [17]. A negotiation method based collaborative design approach for component reuse in disparate products was proposed, and a fuzzy inference guided asymmetric negotiation mechanism reduced the efforts required in generating offers/counteroffers in the negotiation process was given [18]. Negotiation theory and Game theory was combined to develop a negotiation system supported by computer system [19]. An argumentation based engineering negotiation approach that provides a structured framework for designers to identify design situations, form arguments, and make joint decisions by following various strategies was proposed [20], [21]. A multi-agent negotiation mechanism for distributed design based on price schedules decomposition was proposed. The mechanism allows self-interested collaborators to jointly make design decisions for the benefit of an overall design task without disclosing individual objectives or rationales [22].

The complexity and specificity exist in negotiation in multidisciplinary engineering design, which involve multiple interrelated negotiations and multiple levels of negotiation among multi-functional disciplines (multiple disciplines come from different functional areas, do not understand each other well, and often involve multiple interrelated negotiations. Design negotiation is not merely about physical parameters, but about function requirements, design goals and designers’ preferences), and semi-structured and ill-structured design problems (design problems are often open-ended and not well represented, human involvement is inevitable), etc. Thus, the negotiation characteristics in multidisciplinary engineering design should be thoroughly researched to develop an effective negotiation model.

In this paper, a novel negotiation methodology for multidisciplinary collaborative product design is given. The characteristics such as cooperative competition, professional dependence, compromise, multiple-domain, overall utility and so on in MCD under the distributed network are analyzed in detail, the negotiation mode and the negotiation strategy which are appropriate for multidisciplinary collaborative product design are explored. A formal description about negotiation strategy is given, and a negotiation model for MCD under a certain assumptive condition is generated. The negotiation process that assists the team to resolve conflicts and reach agreement quickly is studied. A design example of the automobile friction clutch is used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.

Section snippets

Negotiation characteristics and negotiation mode in MCD

Due to the differences in goal, professional background and design strategy, etc among different disciplines in MCD, there exist following negotiation characteristic (as shown in Table 1).

This classification is multidisciplinary engineering design negotiation oriented and conducive to the build of a novel negotiation model to assist the different disciplines rapidly reach a consistent compromise solution.

Some negotiation modes are as follows:

  • Direct negotiation mode: the conflicts are resolved

Negotiation strategy

The conflict resolution in MCD can be based on physical domain or objective domain. The conflict resolution based on physical domain is the coordination in lower level, which is to maintain the consistency among the relevant physical parameters of product [23], [24], but is not goal-oriented. The conflict resolution in objective domain is the coordination in higher level, and is goal-oriented. But it is also hard to fulfill the conflict resolution in objective domains due to the following

System framework

The negotiation system of MCD under the distributed network environment is shown in Fig. 3. The system consists of discipline design modules, negotiation management module, and project management module, etc. Project management module is responsible for configuration of product design project. Negotiation management module supports the negotiation among multiple disciplines and assists them in reaching a consensus.

In discipline design module, the discipline designer selects a suitable strategy

Case study

To demonstrate our approach we consider the design of automotive friction clutch. The working conditions are as follows: compact car (engine capacity 2.0 L), medium load, the biggest torque Temax = 310 N m, maximum power Pe = 121 kW, the total pressure F = 5 kN, reserve coefficient β = 1.5. Design of the friction plate in friction clutch involves three disciplines: discipline 1 (structure design discipline), discipline 2 (tribology design discipline) and discipline 3 (strength design discipline). The three

Conclusions

In essence, the negotiation in MCD is a flexible compromise and coordination process. With the thorough analysis on the characters of negotiation in MCD, this paper synthetically considers the benefit equilibrium among discipline individuals and system team, proposes a negotiation strategy to maximize the union satisfaction degree of the system’s overall objective under the premise of ensuring the higher satisfaction degree of each discipline’s local objective. The relationship between

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to the supports provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 50875049) and the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, China (No. 2014J01184). We are also grateful to the reviewers for their invaluable comments, which have helped us greatly in revising this paper.

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