The design process within concurrent engineering environments: addressing information saturation

The multidisciplinary team input to the design process called for in concurrent engineering environments is not clearly addressed by many of the commonly cited models of the design process, nor do these models address the issues of information saturation that inclusion of the resultant multiplicity of inputs can lead to, particularly in the early stages of design development. Whilst Soft Systems Analysis methods can be incorporated into the design process in order to ensure inclusion of a wide range of differing team member viewpoints, having obtained these multiple viewpoints there is still great potential for information saturation within the design process. A design process model is required that can address both of these key issue. This paper presents an innovative framework of such a new model of the design process that takes an information centred, rather than activity centred, approach and in so doing seeks to address these and other issues.