An operational perspective for capturing the engineering design process

Abstract

In general, engineering design processes embrace knowledge-intensive activities. A successful collaborative design process depends on the ability to effectively manage and share engineering knowledge and experience throughout the development process. Consequently, many research efforts have focused on product and process knowledge representations that sustain design processes. However, there is a lack of models and tools supporting the capture of knowledge used by designers during a design project. To overcome such trouble, this contribution introduces a model that allows having a systematic and organized record of the operations and actors which have originated each design product. This capture is based on an explicit mechanism to trace different versions of the design products.