Added Value Process Proposition For Collaborative Design In Early Development Phases Using Simulation Models In Aeronautics And Automotive Industries

The research presented in this paper is part of a larger effort on collaborative design modelling, and is focused in the modelling of three main characteristics in collaborative design using simulation models: actors, activities and objects. To represent these three features, an added value process proposition for a collaborative design in early development phases using simulation models was suggested. The proposed process contributes to an added value solution at three different levels in the organization: the operational level, the tactic level and the strategic level, and was implemented during a project at the Research Institute of Technology SystemX having Renault and Airbus industries as partners of the project. After the project ends, dynamic interviews were done with the project team members in order to get a feedback regarding the process and to understand the collaborative interactions in a real use case. Afterwards, implementation and evaluation of the process conclude that collaboration in Modelling and simulation context is not a linear problem at all, but the proposed representation is highly adapted to improve global comprehension of the objectives and the context understanding in a first time. The results point out the actors as the key element on the collaborative design and raise a new research question.