XML-based knowledge management for DFM

Abstract

During the last ten years, concurrent engineering has been largely studied and this new industrial organisation has been commonly adopted in most of huge automotive and aeronautics enterprises and in several SMEs as well. Every design phases are currently more and more narrowed and realised simultaneously during product design process. Product life cycle knowledge has now to be integrated as soon as possible during product development in order to improve the collaborative design. This paper aims at presenting an approach to manage and integrate manufacturing knowledge in design. Some first specifications are presented for the database structure using XML (eXtended Markup Language). This manufacturing knowledge is used in several contexts as teaching and scientific research on Design for Manufacture (DFM). XML language allows filtering information according to the real need of users. This need is straight linked to user’s activity and the main idea of knowledge management is then to provide the right information to this designer at the right time during his activity. The DFM activity is also briefly presented in the paper via product manufacturability analysis and synthesis method and modelling.