Knowledge elicitation for risk mapping in concurrent engineering projects

The identification and management of risks in Concurrent Engineering (CE) projects is essential to ensure better resource utilization and greater contribution of projects towards organizational goals. The implementation of Concurrent Engineering philosophy aims to incorporate parallel processes for successful product design as well as reducing its time-to-market and improving its quality with team members from different functional units in multiple site locations, sharing information and resources. However, unexpected events are commonly encountered in many CE projects which can not be handled by traditional project management techniques due to the features of complexity and inter-functionality of CE projects. Thus, incorporating a holistic process model of concurrent engineering environment through Knowledge Elicitation would identify several critical success factors for a better decision making process within the domain of the project based case studies. This paper, concentrates primarily on Knowledge Elicitation techniques that were used to provide the knowledge to the Intelligent Risk Mapping and Assessment System (IRMAS(TM)) which is under development to identify,, prioritize, analyze and assist project managers to manage perceived sources of CE risks. The nature of the knowledge gathered and how it was structured and utilized is outlined for "case based reasoning", "lessons learnt", "best practices", "partner profiles" and "engineering standards". The core of the research is a reasoning and methodology used for Knowledge Elicitation of a Risk Mapping and Assessment System which not only will support the decision-making process of the user but also aid the knowledge retrieving, storing, sharing and updating process of manufacturing organizations.