Design rationale as a principle for developing design knowledge management systems

The fundamental objective of our work is the definition of a schema for knowledge bases that integrates knowledge about the design of a family of products with that of its process of manufacture and other activities of the products life cycle. Our approach to design knowledge management follows three general principles. First, the description of all the aspects that are relevant for designing a product. Second, we adopt the idea of making explicit design rationale as a principle that pervades the design of our schema. Third, an efficient structure of knowledge bases based upon separating knowledge elements that are common to a product family from those that pertain to a specific product model. In this paper, we give an outline of the schema conceived for design knowledge management and explain the role of design rationale in its design. Then, we illustrate the use of our schema through examples of knowledge items from the domain of packaging design and manufacture. Finally, we present a simple software tool for maintaining and consulting knowledge bases structured in accordance with the schema. In this presentation, we briefly discuss the main technological and implementation aspects, and the use of the tool developed.