Improving reusing abilities in concurrent engineering

Concurrent engineering activities can be improved thanks to reusing abilities. For this purpose, the authors propose an integrated information system which couples strongly the project description and management to the different kinds of information produced at each step. Then adapted information retrieval functions, as the “ analogical reasoning” or the “structural browsing” are developed, and improved thanks to “group technology” approaches. Of course, reusing abilities involves also adapting the retrieved information. For this purpose, the system must be extended to support few convenient tools taken from the telecommunication field to support such a work