Traceability and management of dispersed product knowledge during design and manufacturing

Mohamed Zied Ouertani (1) , Salah Baïna (2) , Lilia Gzara (3) , Gérard Morel (4)

1 Engineering Department
2 ENSIAS - Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Informatique et d'Analyses des Systèmes
3 G-SCOP_SIREP - Système d’Information, conception RobustE des Produits
4 CRAN - Centre de Recherche en Automatique de Nancy

Product development processes comprise highly creative and knowledge-intensive tasks that involve extensive information exchange and communication among geographically distributed teams. Due to the geographical and institutional separation between the different systems involved in the product lifecycle, retrieving, sharing and exchanging product knowledge is becoming a key issue in information systems of extended enterprise. This paper addresses the issue and challenges of product knowledge traceability during the product development. The aim of this research effort is to enhance the exchange and use of product knowledge acquired during the development process. In order to satisfy the needs for acquisition and reuse of product knowledge, a product knowledge representation framework is proposed. Key elements to support traceability during product development process are identified. The key idea behind this research effort is based on the premises that an important step towards achieving product knowledge sharing is providing traceability across various product knowledge elements that are used in product development phases, i.e. design and manufacturing. Two complementary case studies illustrating the benefit of traceability are presented. The potential role of traceability is described, first to support the decision making process during engineering change management, and second to support product oriented modelling for knowledge sharing and exchanging to meet quality requirements.

Mots clés: Product development process; Product knowledge (PK); PK traceability approach; PK traceability constructs

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Mohamed Zied Ouertani, Salah Baïna, Lilia Gzara, Gérard Morel. Traceability and management of dispersed product knowledge during design and manufacturing. Computer-Aided Design, 2011, 43 (5), pp.546-562. ⟨10.1016/j.cad.2010.03.006⟩. ⟨hal-00476669⟩