Designing complex systems requires collaboration among multiple engineers who coordinate to plan tasks, cooperate to resolve dependencies, and co-construct to identify shared objectives and solutions. While collaboration technologies have been developed to date, few can help designers negotiate effectively and reach agreement efficiently. In this paper, we propose an argumentation based engineering negotiation approach that provides a structured framework for designers to specify design situations, compose arguments, and make joint decisions by following various strategies. The details of the proposed approach are described and a case study is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.

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Engineering of complex systems often involves teamwork. The members of an engineering team must work together to identify design requirements, explore design spaces, generate design alternatives, and make both interactive and joint design decisions. Because of the latency of information and the disciplinary differences, it is often a difficult process for the members of a team to reach agreements when needed. Negotiation has been studied as a method for facilitating information exchange, mutual understanding, and joint decision making. An argumentation-based negotiation approach was previously proposed by the authors to support collaborative engineering design. In this paper, we present an experiment study that was conducted to evaluate the impact of this negotiation support approach on the process and the outcome of collaborative design. The results of the experiment show both positive effects and limitations of the approach.

This paper describes the new Honda R&D Americas Scale Model Wind Tunnel (SWT). To help address Honda's ongoing need to improve fuel economy, reduce the driving force of a vehicle, and decrease product development time, the wind tunnel was developed and implemented to achieve high accuracy aerodynamic predictions for product development and a significantly improved capability for vehicle aerodynamics research. The SWT can accommodate model scales up to 50%. The ¾-open jet test section has a top speed of 250 km/h, a 5-belt moving ground plane with a long center belt for proper wake simulation, a test section designed specifically for very low static pressure gradient, three separate dynamic pressure measurement systems for state-of-the-art blockage corrections, and an overhead traverse for specialized measurement activities. This paper describes the decision process that led to the SWT, key commissioning results, and performance validation results with models installed. In addition, the paper describes a concurrent program within Honda to design and build scaled vehicle models that have spinning wheels, realistic engine cooling and underbody flows, and excellent geometric accuracy.

Engineering of complex systems often involves teamwork. The team members must work together to identify requirements, explore design spaces, generate design alternatives, and make both interactive and joint design decisions. Due to the latency of information and the disciplinary differences, it is often a difficult process for the team members to reach agreements when needed. Negotiation has been studied as a method for facilitating information exchange, mutual understanding, and joint decision-making. In our previous work, we introduced an argumentation-based negotiation framework to support collaborative design. In this paper, we present an experiment study that was conducted to assess the impact of this negotiation support approach on the process and the outcome of collaborative design. The results of the experiment have shown both the positive effects and limitations of the approach.