Rules-Based Engineering: An Idea Ahead of Its Time?

Is rules-based engineering something users cannot quite see the need for? It may be unfair to judge based on the paltry turnout at a recent presentation by David Vredenburgh of the importance of RuleStream at the recent NDES. Or maybe it was the 3:00 time slot, when most attendees’ brains are so overloaded they can only think of the relief that dinner will provide.

But the man makes some really good points. Consider this:

1. Your company only has resources to respond to only so many RFQs. Say it’s 20%. If you could respond to 25%, even with the same win rate, you’d get more contracts. By the way, RuleStream will help you do that.

2. But why, be happy with 25%? Many contracts are awarded as soon as a acceptable bid comes in. Rulestream, with automated configuration management, will help you send bids sooner. An example cited how the win rate of 20% was increased to 25% just by getting bids in faster.

Vredenburgh kept his presentation non-technical. Perhaps he had heard Stephen Hawking the physicist say for every equation you show, you lose half your audience. Vredenburgh only had 10 in his audience, he could not spare any. But I wanted to see what was under the hood. Rules-based software is based on equations. To create some of the flashy configuration changes shown in RuleStreams PowerPoint presentation must have taken a boatload of equations. I suspect that is why rules-based engineering has not caught on. But that’s just me.

Joke: When you do your cost/benefit analysis that shows rules-based engineering reducing manpower by 5 people, remember you actually have to let those 5 people go. If you repurpose them by making them wash windows, your company will not save any money but will have really clean windows. You had to be there.

Comments

[Renga]

Old wine in new bottle.

A bidding software is same as this.

But always old wines require newest bottles.

Well, you see every body wants new words, terminologies on the bottle so that they know it is the same old wine in the same old way of presenting it in new bottle..

Best of Luck..may be they will start one more whirlwind called rule based engineering..

[Jaspreet Hothi]

The joke was not very fitting to the situation. Rule based engineering does not intend at reducing manpower. It intends at putting designer's time into more creative and productive things like analysing more design alternatives, than spending time in modeling out the design alternatives from scratch. It is all about canalizing the energy towards more productive things.