Research And Practice On Product Knowledge Management For Reusable Design

The efficient management and reusing of product development knowledge serves as one of the key issues for enterprises to keep leading position in the age of knowledge economics. At the support and sponsor of National Natural Science Foundation,the design theory, method and technology based on knowledge reusing are carried out in the project team which author joined in. Combining with several engineering project, the product knowledge management method and technology which support reusable design is studied, the product knowledge management (PKM) prototype system which owns characteristics such as universal property, visualization, easiness to expand is developed and the application of this system is discussed. Firstly, a method for the expression of product knowledge with three tables (information table, decision-making table and control table) is discussed based on the brief introduction of the basic theory of reusable design. Then the primary design of product knowledge management system is carried through, the overall system structure of PKM, knowledge process flow and function structure are studied, and integration of PKM with other system is discussed.Then product knowledge management method and realization technologies, the emphasis of the thesis, are discussed. To improve the universal property of PKM, the product knowledge visualization definition method based on data dictionary is proposed. The data dictionary, which can be visually expanded to add new knowledge by developer, is created through analysis of three knowledge tables and describes their basic structure. The principle, knowledge visualization definition process and realization technology are discussed. In respect of knowledge acquisition, the product design information obtainment method and the decision-making rules distilled from decision-making table are included. For knowledge organization, mix organization method based on product structure and knowledge type, and its realization technologies are discussed. As the quick index for knowledge is the base of improving the efficiency of reusable design, a tool for knowledge index configuration is designed for the self-suit of designer to the knowledge index custom, of which basic method and realization technology are discussed.In addition, the application technology of PKM in the product design is discussed in this thesis. On the base of analysis of use flow for PKM in product design, the product character knowledge obtainment method based on Step and the expression method for such knowledge are discussed. The realization technology of product structure distillation and knowledge sort method on part character are studied, based on which mix organization of product design knowledge is realized. The design knowledge index and appliance problem are discussed at the example of design of output shaft in three-class shift box.At last, some operation examples of product knowledge management system, iPKM, developed by author is introduced, the conclusion of the whole thesis is drawn, and the prospect of research and application of PKM is discussed.