ON ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGY, SYSTEM FRAMEWORK AND ENABLING TECHNOLOGY FOR COLLABORATIVE PRODUCT DESIGN

Given the increasing-growing global competition, collaborative product design (CPD) is a highly promising business strategy for increasing the competitiveness of enterprises. The essence of collaborative product design lies in a distributive and collaborative process, in which people in different disciplines and from different enterprises cooperate to design products and develop related processes via remote coordination, communication, and process control. This paper describes a distributed engineering knowledge management approach for the practice of collaborative product design. In developing the proposed approach, a CPD-based engineering knowledge management methodology is first proposed under the concepts of knowledge management and collaboration. Based on the proposed methodology, a CPD-based engineering knowledge management system framework is then designed. Finally, several enabling technologies involved in the engineering knowledge management system framework are identified and developed, followed by prototype construction of a CPD-based engineering knowledge management system. Results of this research will enable the practice of collaborative product design and subsequently help engineering designers quickly and efficiently develop high quality products.