For more than two decades,
manufacturers have utilized computer aided design (CAD) technology
to automate product
design and development. Almost every product development organization
has leveraged CAD geometry creation tools – first 2D drafting
packages, and today, 3D solid modeling systems – to automate
the development of engineering drawings and to document production
models, compress design cycles, reduce prototype development
costs, and improve product quality. While CAD tools have helped
many manufacturers realize substantial productivity gains, cost
reductions, and time savings, they seldom incorporate the unique
knowledge, experience, and know-how gained over time that are
an increasingly valuable part of the product development process.
Typically, design engineers use CAD tools when creating product
geometry every time they design a new product, but manufacturers
must rely on the presence of mind of their engineers to incorporate
the company’s product development knowledge, best practices,
and experience into the design of new products.
Even those manufacturers
that utilize legacy design geometry for new product development,
refining prior
designs with each
product cycle, cannot do so in an automated, managed fashion
that applies the knowledge the organization has accumulated over
the years in terms of formalized rules and unique automated processes.
This valuable information is often stored in the engineers’ minds
or tucked away in a file cabinet or PDM application, and many
manufacturing concerns have either lost valuable design knowledge
when engineers retire or leave the company or experience unnecessary
development delays because of the need to go back and implement
these rules and processes late in the development cycle.
The need to capture, manage,
and utilize design knowledge and automate processes unique
to a manufacturers
product development
experience led to the development of knowledge-based engineering
(KBE) technology, the purpose of which is to create a specialized
design environment that can automate certain product design functions,
apply formal design rules and constraints, and leverage the company’s
design and manufacturing experience. The goal of KBE technology
is to provide design organizations with a tool for capturing
and infusing this valuable knowledge into its product design
processes to produce more consistent quality and dramatically
increase design efficiencies.
KBE is a mature methodology
that bridges the gap between knowledge management and design
automation,
integrating their best features
with today’s proven product development tools – CAD,
CAE, PDM, and ERP in particular – to provide real results
to some of the biggest challenges manufacturing organizations
face today.
