Development of KBE system to support LeanPPD application

Some efforts to achieve of a Lean Product development must be addressed formalizing and structuring the knowledge in such a way that any engineering decisions taken are based on proven knowledge and experience. Applying Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) throughout the design process can significantly enable the designer to focus more on innovations and to shorten the overall design process. To address this challenge, LeanPPD project, funded by the European Commission (NMP-2008-214090) has developed a systematic approach for knowledge acquisition, re-use and creation to enhance value creation based on proven knowledge enabling the application of lean thinking in product design and development. This approach is a novel Lean Knowledge Life Cycle (LeanKLC) methodology. The main objective of this paper is to present a working Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) system which showcases one possible use in product development of the aforementioned methodology. The content of the knowledge has been captured following the LeanKLC methodology. The KBE system allows design departments to make decisions based on previous projects knowledge and on proven technological domain knowledge. Finally, as this research is strongly industry oriented, this paper summarizes the implementation and testing of KBE system.