Case-based reasoning in product innovation design

The present research depicts the process and patterns of product innovation design with case-based reasoning (CBR) by a cognitive approach. By using protocol analysis and sketch analysis, the present research argues that product innovation design is a problem-solving process based on reusing and revising existing solutions to match new problem-domain; and innovations occur at the problem-solving process from problem-domain to solution-domain, and also the feedback from solution-domain to problem-domain. A framework based on the structural model of product innovation design and the CBR cycle is formulated to architecture the case-based product innovation mechanism. Then a cased-based industrial design (CBID) system on numerical control machine tool (NCMT) is presented, and the improvement on the product designer’s ability and quality of NCMT manufacturing through the CBID is discussed.