Collaborative metamodeling: Coordinating simulation-based product design

High-tech products, like automobiles and aircrafts, consist of many components. To evaluate component designs, simulation tools are frequently used. However, component complexity often results in very large simulation times, so the number of evaluated designs is limited. Further, relations among components make the design of the final product a very hard task that can only be accomplished by a proper coordination of all the simulation tools. The first part of this paper gives a framework to deal with simulation-based product design for cases where there are multiple coupled simulation tools and large simulation times. We call our approach Collaborative Metamodeling (CMM). The CMM approach focuses on the construction of metamodels for components, in order to gain insight in the behavior of components and the final product. This knowledge is used in finding an optimal and robust product design. The second part of this paper deals with the coordination of simulation tools. Therefore, we define three coordination methods: Parallel simulation, Sequential simulation, and Sequential modeling. To compare these three methods, we focus on five aspects: use of precedent information, coordination complexity, simulated product designs, flexibility, and throughput time. For the throughput time aspect we derive mathematical formulas and give relations between the throughput times of the three coordination methods. At the end of this part we summarize the results and give recommendations on the choice of a suitable coordination method. The third part of this paper contains a case-study, in which the CMM approach is applied to the design process of a color picture tube.