T-PROST: A Transdisciplinary Process Oriented Framework to Support the Product Design Phase in Systems Concurrent Engineering

摘要

The objective of this work is to present and to discuss the potentialities of a transdisciplinary process modeling methodology, which has been named T-PROST Framework, to support the product design phase processes (production and management) in the systems concurrent engineering lifecycle. The methodology consists in creating a conceptual reference model of the systems concurrent engineering lifecycle processes and to transform it into specialised models of the areas of (Model Based) Systems Engineering, Project Management, Business Process Management and Simulation Modeling. The main benefits generated by the approach are derived from: The systematisation of the model development, encompassing both the systems engineering processes and their management; The use of the T-ProST Framework for model implementation and analysis, based on the simultaneous use of diverse disciplines and their respective methodologies and tools; The joint assessment of the specialised models created to provide better solutions and to improve project development. The T-ProST Framework can be used for the implementation of generic environments, made by the ensemble of applications implemented with the specialised tools used in the diverse disciplines. These generic environments can be used to perform product lifecycle management by organisations conducting short lifecycle project developments, characterised by low and mid-level complexity scopes submitted to severe time and budgetary constraints, as an alternative to the use of complex, expensive and difficult to configure proprietary systems existing on the market.