A way to foster knowledge sharing in engineering design SMEs

Cyril Beylier (1) , Franck Pourroy (2) , François Villeneuve (1)

1 G-SCOP_CPP - Conception Produit Process
2 G-SCOP_CC - Conception collaborative

Biggest firms do not come across the same technological or organizational obstacles as the smallest structures. It becomes more and more useful for SMEs to improve the management of their knowledge. However, this approach cannot be conducted in the same way as it could be within a large company. This article presents a first step of an ongoing work with the objective of proposing solutions to support asynchronous collaboration and knowledge sharing within design offices of SMEs. A series of investigations, led us to identify some problems met by the enterprises of the mechanical engineering domain. Collaborating with a SME which provides manufacturing companies with numerical simulation services, an experimental approach based on the development of software prototype is proposed. By the identification of technical information handled during the calculation projects, the objective is to encourage the sharing of job specific knowledge between engineers. Around a centralization of technical information, some way of management of the collaboration are proposed. The implementation of this experimental prototype is carried out within a SME with a support for the users, to help them in creating new practices around this tool.

Mots clés: knowledge sharing; SME; repository; calculation office

Domaines: Génie mécanique [physics.class-ph]; Génie mécanique [physics.class-ph]

Cyril Beylier, Franck Pourroy, François Villeneuve. A way to foster knowledge sharing in engineering design SMEs. 6th Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Mechanical Engineering, CD, IDMME 2006, May 2006, Grenoble, France. ⟨hal-00375281⟩