Abstract: The important role of conflict resolution in concurrent engineering environment is analyzed，and an approach of rule-based conflict resolution is introduced in this paper．The conflict resolution knowledge in practice is regarded as a special kind of expertise and represented as production rules by us．The procedure of rule-based conflict resolution is proposed，and the corresponding support tool is implemented by DEST——a design expert system tool．Rule-based conflict resolution has the advantage of simplicity，quickness，and easy integration．