It is well-known that some 85% of the resources necessary to design and bring to market a product are committed by decisions taken in the first 10% of the design activity. This together with the wish to reduce further the time-to-market of high quality innovative products has increased the need for computer support at the conceptual design stage of the engineering design process life-style. This proceedings firmly focuses on the continuing research into new uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) during the conceptual design process. It shows how novel applications of AI may be integrated with aspects of solid modelling, simulation optimisation and multiple criterion decision- making. A particular emphasis is placed on the use of AI methods in the overall design of products from major Civil Engineering structures to Consumer Electronics.

Efficient design management solutions for today's new challenges Design Management: Process and Information Issues is a collection of papers presented at the 13th International Conference on Engineering Design in Glasgow, Scotland. One of four volumes, this book highlights the newest developments in design management and the solutions that facilitate innovation. Focused on common challenges within the design process, these papers provide insight gleaned from current and ongoing work to help design and engineering teams meet the increasing demands of the modern product development environment.

Change is one of the most significant parameters in our society. Designers are amongst the primary change agents for any society. As a consequence design is an important research topic in engineering and architecture and related disciplines, since design is not only a means of change but is also one of the keystones to economic competitiveness and the fundamental precursor to manufacturing. The development of computational models founded on the artificial intelligence paradigm has provided an impetus for much of current design research -both computational and cognitive. These forms of design research have only been carried out in the last decade or so and in the temporal sense they are still immature. Notwithstanding this immaturity, noticeable advances have been made both in extending our understanding of design and in developing tools based on that understanding. Whilst many researchers in the field of artificial intelligence in design utilise ideas about how humans design as one source of concepts there is normally no attempt to model human designers. Rather the results of the research presented in this volume demonstrate approaches to increasing our understanding of design as a process.

One of the foundations for change in our society comes from designing. Its genesis is the notion that the world around us either is unsuited to our needs or can be improved. The need for designing is driven by a society's view that it can improve or add value to human existence well beyond simple subsistence. As a consequence of designing the world which we inhabit is increasingly a designed rather than a naturally occurring one. In that sense it is an "artificial" world. Designing is a fundamental precursor to manufacturing, fabrication, construction or implementation. Design research aims to develop an understanding of designing and to produce models of designing that can be used to aid designing. Artificial intelligence has provided an environmental paradigm within which design research based on computational constructions, can be carried out. Design research can be carried out in variety of ways. It can be viewed as largely an empirical endeavour in which experiments are designed and executed in order to test some hypothesis about some design phenomenon or design behaviour. This is the approach adopted in cognitive science. It often manifests itself through the use of protocol studies of designers. The results of such research form the basis of a computational model. A second view is that design research can be carried out by positing axioms and then deriving consequences from them.

The development of computational models of design founded on the artificial intelligenceparadigm has provided an impetus for muchofcurrentdesign research. As artificial intelligence has matured and developed new approaches so the impact ofthese new approaches on design research has been felt. This can be seen in the wayconcepts from cognitive science has found theirway into artificial intelligence and hence into design research. And, also in the way in which agent-based systems arebeingincorporated into design systems. In design research there is an increasing blurring between notions drawn from artificial intelligence and those drawn from cognitive science. Whereas a number of years ago the focus was largely on applying artificial intelligence to designing as an activity, thus treating designing as a form ofproblem solving, today we are seeing a much wider variety ofconceptions of the role of artificial intelligence in helping to model and comprehend designing as a process. Thus, we see papers in this volume which have as their focus the development or implementationofframeworks for artificial intelligence in design - attempting to determine a unique locus for these ideas. We see papers which attempt to find foundations for the development of tools based on the artificial intelligence paradigm; often the foundations come from cognitive studiesofhuman designers.

This book presents the state of the art of artificial intelligence techniques applied to structural engineering. The 28 revised full papers by leading scientists were solicited for presentation at a meeting held in Ascona, Switzerland, in July 1998. The recent advances in information technology, in particular decreasing hardware cost, Internet communication, faster computation, increased bandwidth, etc., allow for the application of new AI techniques to structural engineering. The papers presented deal with new aspects of information technology support for the design, analysis, monitoring, control and diagnosis of various structural engineering systems.

This is the first part of a five-volume reference on the very broad and highly significant subject of computer-aided and integrated manufacturing systems. The techniques and technologies used in computer-aided and integrated manufacturing systems have produced, and will no doubt continue to produce, major annual improvements in productivity, which is defined as the goods and services produced from each hour of work. This publication deals particularly with more effective utilization of labour and capital, especially information technology systems. Together the five volumes treat comprehensively the major techniques and technologies that are involved. This volume focuses on computer techniques.