Process history capture in a concurrent engineering collaboration environment

One method of speeding up traditional engineering activities is by introducing parallel development paths. Although cycle time is reduced, coordination and project documentation become more difficult and are further exacerbated by synchronous collaboration. These needs can be addressed by capturing, accessing, and reusing knowledge consisting of the design, together with its rationale and development history. Successful capturing of design knowledge includes these elements and answers to several questions: What is the design? How was the design achieved? Why were choices made? The paper describes how to capture the history of the informal phase of the specification and design process using the Collaborative Environment for Concurrent Engineering Design (CECED)