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

Improving Product-Service Systems by Exploiting Information From The Usage Phase. A Case Study

AbstractNowadays the relevance of Product-Service-Systems (PSS) is increasing. Providing customers with products and supporting services suiting the customer expectations becomes a key-factor for being successful in the market. Contemporarily, a huge amount of data such as usage-data from sensors or Product Embedded Information Devices as well as customer feedback from social media, forums or blogs is already available for manufacturers of PSS. These data sources provide valuable knowledge about the customer's usage of products and their expectations and complaints.The successful exploitation of PUI - Product Usage Information (such as sensor data or user feedback) becomes a key success factor for future product developments as they aid the development of PSS directly deriving from costumer requirements. But an efficient use of such knowledge requires the setup of PUI related analysis, filters and the identification of dependencies between PUI and design parameters or component attributes. Thus, transferring the usage information to design requirements is currently the major challenge in the process of developing successful PSS.Currently, there is a lack of research for a systematic transfer of PUI into product design requirements. A basic pre-condition for a knowledge transfer is a formal and neutral representation of both sides, usage data on the one hand and design parameters on the other. An approach for such a neutral representation is KbeML, which is specified as a formal extension of the established SysML standard, enabling a linkage of PUI and formalized KBE models.This paper provides a case study regarding the connection of PUI and KBE models in the branch of White Goods. The information gathered from sensors embedded in washing machines will be considered in order to retrieve improved design requirements for next generation washing machines. In a first step the product structure of a washing machine will be represented in a formal and neutral manner by using KbeML. This way the washing machine is formally described in terms of an assembly structure, and broken down into subsystems and eventually individual parts, which are defined by their relevant core parameters.In addition, the derived sensor data will be formalized as a SysML extension. The linkage between both sides (product structure data and PUI) can be achieved by mapping design parameters directly to parameters and values provided by sensors. To enable an analysis of these parameters the modelling language will provide statistical elements (e.g. median) allowing the extraction of critical values (information) from data streams.This way a comprehensive modelling environment can be provided to corresponding stakeholders, supporting an effective and efficient application of usage data for the development of new or the improvement of existing PSS