Automating design requirement acquisition for product knowledge management systems

The accuracy of information input to the product knowledge management is depended on the process of retrieving design requirement from the customer and obtaining related information from different departments in the product development cycle. To this end, this research develops an automated interface built in the product knowledge management systems (PKMS) to retrieve above product design information. Specifically, we discuss four issues based on the structure of PKMS. At first, the demand and change of product design is investigated to reflect the challenge of product knowledge management and redefine the design process. Secondly, design automation components required implementing the PKMS such as developable graphic user interface, design advice and compiling modules is developed. The third research develops the representation scheme of product knowledge based on a relational structure. Finally, a PKMS with automated interface to retrieve product design requirement is proposed and examined.