Enabling collaborative product design through distributed engineering knowledge management

Collaborative product design (CPD) is a knowledge-intensive process that encompasses conceptual design, detailed design, engineering analysis, assembly design, process design, and performance evaluation. Each task involves various areas of knowledge and experience. However, successful collaborative product design depends on the ability to effectively manage and share engineering knowledge and experience throughout the entire development process. Consequently, the realization of distributed engineering knowledge management, which not only supports collaborative product design but also accumulates and utilizes corporate memory situated at various locations, has become one of the key tasks managed by industries. This paper presents 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. This methodology includes a knowledge management-oriented engineering management work model, a distributed engineering knowledge management framework, and rules and methods for managing engineering knowledge. The CPD-based engineering knowledge management system framework is designed, on the basis of this proposed methodology. Finally, a CPD-based engineering knowledge management system is developed using unified modeling language (UML) modeling techniques.