Product design knowledge management based on design structure matrix

To speed up the product design efficiency, product designers would like to utilize the past experience and know-how in assisting the design of new products or in the enhancement of existing one. What is needed is a systematic and structured way for product design knowledge capturing, organization, and reuse. Design structure matrix (DSM), a structured method which has advantages on representing and analysing interaction relations among system elements, is considered to be a suitable means to capture and manage the system-level design knowledge. The captured knowledge through DSM can improve understanding the design routes and design history by linking designed items to rationales, decisions and assumptions. Meanwhile, the captured knowledge through DSM could assist designers to predict changes on existing solutions, and to reuse the existing solutions in new projects. The main outcome of this paper is focused on how to capture and trace the design knowledge through single-domain DSM and multi-domain DSMs, respectively. Finally a DSM-based design knowledge management system is introduced, which can enable the efficient knowledge capturing, searching, and tracing in product design.