Towards a Knowledge Base to Support the Management of the Design Process of Formulated Products

Abstract

The design of new consumer chemical products is a complex task at different levels. In addition to the technical challenges of the formulation, design teams should also consider the requirements of the organization where the design is performed. The objective of this article is to present a knowledge base to support decision-making for the design of formulated products, considering the organizational dimension. For this, data were collected during ten semi-structured in-depth interviews with industrial experts who are also decisional actors in the design process. From the collected data, design recommendations were identified and analyzed. These recommendations are statements which can be used by organizations to evaluate, understand, improve, or create their own design methodologies considering their context and resources. Subsequently, the extracted recommendations were analyzed according to three types of criteria: the stages of the design process, the involved actors, and the organizational context. As a result, a knowledge base containing systematically organized recommendations that have led to the development of successful products is presented. Finally, the multiple uses of the knowledge base are shown with theoretical examples and the knowledge base is applied to analyze the design process of a real organization: in a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) in the cosmetic sector.