Autonomous Agents and Product Development Systems
By Mike Bauer, Partner, CSC Consulting Group

Can autonomous agent technology and product design systems mesh? Can the combination of the two allow for more rapid product design? Can autonomous agents act as, or act on adaptors to revolutionize product design? Can autonomous agents replace proprietary interfaces and/or standards?

This paper is a short version of a CSC Leading Edge Forum project to explore the efficacy of using agents to interact with product development systems (CAD/CAM/CIM/PDM). Could agents replace the proprietary interfaces used to access product design tools and product data management systems? While it is technically possible, research shows it may not be feasible for sometime. The technical issues are less challenging than the business and organizational issues involved.

• The providers of these systems have a vested interest in maintaining their revenue stream and restricting access
• Upgrades, changes, revisions and changes in operating environments would make maintenance of agents prohibitively expensive and time consuming
• Private sector providers are doing an adequate job of providing interfaces to systems and will continue to do so
• Standards bodies, such as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) have labored for years to develop interoperability standards with mixed results.

The use of agents with product development systems will occur. It could be accelerated if a large enough constituency demanded it, but the research pointed to a more powerful, robust use of agents - using agents to interact and drive product development and aftermarket support. Both governmental and commercial interests will be better served by promoting the use of agent technology to improve product development and aftermarket support of existing products. Autonomous agents will have a tremendous impact on product development, but the main impact will come from preventing equipment failures or mitigating the effects of equipment failures, plus delivering invaluable information to product development teams, manufacturers and logistics providers.

The product development process is well known and understood, yet it is still undergoing many changes to comprehend the dynamic environment of the modern public and private sectors. There are increasing pressures to reduce product development time, the cost of products and perhaps even more importantly, to understand the use and necessary modifications to products once they are produced and deployed. Also, how to distribute the information on product usage to all appropriate entities; from depot maintenance, to supply units, to mobile repair and manufacturing components and finally to original equipment manufacturers and aligned suppliers. In the aerospace and defense industry the exigencies of the modern battlefield will drive developments like this, prior to them taking hold in industry. Many in the manufacturing industry are still focused on shortening the time it takes to produce a concept, i.e. go from a conceptual design to a product in a shorter period of time. That is one very real challenge of the manufacturing industry; they will attempt to solve it by using tools and processes like collaborative product design and concurrent manufacturing. This will not address the problem that is most important – how to support, modify and repair products already in service?

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