This paper presents an integrated but open product development environment for distributed and collaborative design. The web-based framework, called DOME, allows designers to build integrated models using both local and distributed resources and to collaborate by exchanging services. Thus, an integrated model can be created while each participant focuses on their own area of expertise. A design model is created by connecting modules, each of which can represent specific components, analysis capabilities/software, disciplines, or organizations relevant to the problem. The modules interact with each other using service exchanges based upon the CORBA standard communication protocol for distributed objects. The resulting module network forms a concurrent model in which changes propagate through service exchanges. Modules can simultaneously function as both clients (using services from other modules) and servers (providing services to other modules). A Java applet-based user interface provides cross-platform and distributed user access to DOME module servers throughout the network.
Product design is a knowledge-intensive activity. Many product development companies have recognized that design knowledge obtained by individual designers is a valuable asset to a company for enhancing the competitiveness of products the company designs and produces. Therefore, companies are becoming more concerned with the effective use of design knowledge accumulated over previous design practices and the qualitative and quantitative utilization of the knowledge toward the rapidly changing market.
This paper presents a design knowledge management framework called Active Design Support (ADS). ADS framework is aimed to provide designers with critical design knowledge and guide them toward rational design decisions based upon relevant design errors and successful design decisions in the past during product development processes. Based upon a formal information modeling for managing design information, ADS framework determines and proactively provides the critical design knowledge for designers. To provide an intuitive starting point for retrieving design knowledge, ADS framework also provides a set of different viewpoint, called Knowledge Perspective, for browsing the knowledge base of ADS framework.
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