Overview on the development of concurrent design facility

Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) is a workspace and information system allowing multidisciplinary experts working in a focused environment and conducting design collaboration. CDF has been proved to be an effective and efficient manner to implement Concurrent Engineering methodology. The first prototype of CDF was Project Design Center established by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 1994 for the purposes of developing and implementing new tools and processes centering on concurrent engineering for space system. The most famous CDF was established at the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1998 and it has been a template for subsequent development of CDF. To date, more than 20 concurrent design environments have been developed around the world by industries, governments and universities. This paper gives an overview of the background, history and status of CDF development. Some successful applications of CDF in the field of aerospace and its benefits are outlined. Key elements of a CDF, include process, multidisciplinary team, integrated data model, appropriate facility and software infrastructure, are summarized and discussed. Some other topics related with CDF, such as Integrated Design Tool, Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO), are clarified by distinguish their characteristics with CDF. Since the interaction and collaboration among experts are prominent aspect in CDF, the effect of personal behaviors and culture in CDF are also discussed. In engineering education, CDF is invaluable to lecturers by enabling the entire student team to gain cross-discipline skills and at the same time stay at the cutting edge of technology. The paper concludes with a discussion of proposed trends of CDF in the future.