Capitalizing and structuring design knowledge in an SME environment

Abstract

Small companies can find it difficult to preserve their knowledge, and also to structure a design process. A design methodology is proposed, based on design knowledge reuse and suitable for developing new manufacturing processes in an SME context. This paper describes a knowledge structuring and capitalization method, where a functional description is applied. The purpose is to capitalize technical solutions and the components used to carry out a given function, and to build a knowledge base that could be reused when designing new manufacturing processes. In this way, the time spent on research into design concepts can be reduced. Components are identified using the Converter-Transmitter-Operator-Control classification, based on describing the functional flow path in terms of energy. Produced and induced effects associated with the components are highlighted, by identifying the relevant conjugate variables for the functional flows. The choice of solutions in the reuse phase is thus facilitated by considering these effects. In addition, a task decomposition tool has been developed to simplify the describing of existing manufacturing processes. Existing knowledge capitalization methods proved unsuitable for an SME context. Based on the proposed approach, we applied our capitalization method in an industrial context, with the processes used by our partner company, which had never previously capitalized its design knowledge.