Conflict mitigation system for collaborative engineering

Abstract

Large-scale engineering projects typically involve many different types of professionals who must interact and communicate with one another. This interaction produces conflicts that need to be resolved. A framework is presented in which the rationale used in a collaborative design environment for designing an artifact is also used for conflict mitigation. The framework contains mechanisms for checking interactions and prompting hypotheses about the reasons for the interactions. These hypotheses, once verified by the designers, improve conflict resolution by assisting them in coordinating and negotiating conflicts. This, in turn, enhances communication during the design process and consequently increases productivity in the engineering industry.

A collaborative design process model in the sociotechnical engineering design framework

“…To achieve a satisfying performance of the design team, conflicts should be effectively managed by investigating, understanding, and manipulating the perspectives of stakeholders. When treating engineering design as a purely technical process, conflicts are usually regarded as being abnormal and to be avoided as soon as possible at all costs Kannapan & Taylor, 1994;Klein, 1995;Peña-Mora et al, 1995!. On the other hand, when treating engineering design as a sociotechnical process, conflicts might be systematically and explicitly dealt with as a resource to drive the social construction process and design innovations.…”

Computer-supported conflict resolution for collaborative facility designers

“…Decisionmaking as to which direction to take after a conflict has been detected relies on the human designer iDSS (Klein 1995) Provides CR for collaborative design The core of iDSS is a service for capturing all process, product, and organizational decisions and their interdependencies SHARED-DRIMS (Pena-Mora et al 1995) Supports negotiation and CR A system that access both the design rationale of individual designers and information about past negotiations. Therefore, the participating designers are provided with information about how and why each decision was made.…”