~ ~ The main goal of this thesis is to define some of the key issues in CE, and then develop a simple tool to demonstrate several of these issues to managers and engineers. It is intended to be used as a training tool to help educate users in the power and necessity of CE. As such, the system was required to be easy to use, fairly intuitive and self-explanatory. As this system is to be used only in an educational manner, it is a single-user system, with the other members of the CE team being simulated by expert systems.
The first problem was defining what the key issues are in CE and which of those could be implemented in the demonstration system. The next problem was deciding how to design and implement those features in a single-user system within the timeframe of this thesis. Then, a suitable domain had to be established. Designs in the domain had to be simple enough for people from varied backgrounds to understand, but complex enough to offer several aspects from which to evaluate a design. SNEAKERS is the product developed to meet these goals.