Geodeco participated in a European funded project ISTforCE about concurrent engineering under the IST Programme.  More detailed information about the ISTforCE Project are also available.

Role of Geodeco in ISTforCE:

Geodeco has been involved in the conception and development of the AESP (Automatic Engineering Service Provider) as part or the Workpackage: Remote User Rental of Software and Services.

The AESP was aiming at enhancing the capabilities of engineers, offering them new ways of working by means of the most advanced technologies, offering directly the service of solving engineering problems. Offering engineering services through Internet could also allow very small high specialized enterprises to be stronger recognized in the engineering community enabling them to provide their knowledge and services to a large number of potential clients.

An autonomous entity available in Internet and able to interact with users seeking engineering services has been conceived and implemented. This entity contained “intelligent” interfaces able to interact autonomously with the user not only guiding him through menus and buttons but also asking him questions concerning data availability, special needs etc. and offering as free of charge service a check on the effective need for the requested service.

A knowledge-based system implemented this function. If the user (or better say the customer) decides to order the engineering service then all the gathered information will be transmitted to the Central Design Office (see Figure) where the consulting service will be performed with human intervention. A quality verification will be performed to ensure correctness of the results. A report will be then delivered to the client electronically signed by the author (the engineering consultant) who takes therefore full legal responsibility on the correctness of the results.