Exchange of knowledge in customized product development processes

If Customized Product Development is perceived as developing products that fulfill the customers individual requirements and in parallel reflect production constraints, such as manufacturing capabilities, a direct demand can be derived for solutions to adapt a given design easy and fast to new requirements based upon the companies production knowledge - at best in an automated way. The latter is usually covered by Knowledge Based Engineering systems. KBE systems are capable to automate repetitive engineering tasks, such as the automated calculation of ship structural design. However, while the efficiency of implemented KBE projects is non controversial, the development or modification of an existing KBE solution usually requires substantial investments due to knowledge acquisition, codification and software implementation. In addition most solutions are still case based and not grounded in structural frameworks. Knowledge is often written in a proprietary language; rules and algorithms are not compatible with other KBE-frameworks and are usually not on a level that is comprehensible for the engineers or domain experts. While this may not be crucial for long development cycles, it may become a hurdle in terms of Customized Product Development with its short cycles. In other words, future KBE must support an incorporation of knowledge from different domains and business units. Thus the objective of the paper is to explain the need for a change in collaborative knowledge sharing and re-use in context of KBE. Based upon, the constraints for a KBE related interchange format are drafted. A three layered approach is proposed in order to adequately represent and exchange KBE knowledge. Each layer addresses different levels of abstraction: an upper layer describing just the core knowledge at a glance, a middle layer in order to codify the knowledge on abstract level, but with purpose of software development and a base layer covering the software code itself. Utilizing an independent format for management of KBE knowledge, the users of CAx systems are able to exchange codified knowledge and gain the rationale behind. Hence the full paper attempts to deliver a substantial contribution for the development of systems, which are capable to easily adapt a given design to upcoming user-requirements, while facing the production challenges.