Distributed Object-Based Modeling in Design Simulation Marketplace

Abstract

Predictive integrated system modeling is now a pressing issue in the design of complex products ranging from home air conditioners to automobiles and aircraft. While product development organizations have official top-down development processes, it is generally understood that in practice individual participants perform their work in an informal marketplace, bartering service exchange relationships to get what they need to resolve their part of the problem. The authors envision a distributed simulation service marketplace running in parallel with the activities of design participants. This paper develops an object model representation to enable this vision for a decentralized design simulation marketplace. A prototype implementation, called DOME (Distributed Object-based Modeling Environment), is used to illustrate the concept on a beverage container design problem.