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A major issue that affects every industry in which products are developed is the retention and reuse of knowledge. While every organization produces data and information about its products, transforming that data into an accessible knowledge base is difficult. The tools used throughout the product development process typically do not help retain the knowledge of how and why decisions are made, nor do they provide convenient access to that knowledge. Knowledge is the embodiment of experience and data in a directly useable form. How you get home from your office is knowledge. A map showing the way is data that has to be interpreted. Through experience, you know to use different routes shown on the map depending on various conditions such as the weather or the time of day. You have used the map and other information to create knowledge.
Likewise, in product development, understanding how a product is intended to function and how to apply that understanding to create an appropriate product is knowledge. The models and drawings of the product are part of the data that defines the product, but they don't convey how or why someone created the product in a specific way.
For many years, people involved in product design have tried to capture the knowledge that is an inherent part of all design activities. The goals are to be able to:
- Re-use knowledge from previous design efforts to shorten the time and cost required to execute designs
- Reduce design errors
- Improve the quality of designs
- Increase innovation
- Preserve the organization's intellectual property
All of these have a positive impact on the business by reducing costs and allowing companies to better and more quickly satisfy their customers' requirements.
Capturing product knowledge has proven to be very difficult and early attempts at building systems to capture and reuse knowledge have failed because they were too limited technically, required users to be able to develop computer codes (or programs) to embody knowledge rules and actions, and they did not work with common product design tools such as CAD and PDM systems. However, work in this area has continued, and today, a new breed of systems is evolving that offers great promise. We call the emerging market Rules-driven Product Management (RPM).
In the context of RPM, rules are a series of behaviors that can be executed to modify the product definition based on specific requirements. Rules may act on design models (both 2D and 3D geometry) or other aspects of the design such as temperature, flexibility, corrosion resistance, ship date, cost, or weight.
RPM solutions have the following characteristics:
- Rules are managed in defined public contexts (i.e., they are available to all designers); they are also versioned and secured
- They can be used within the user's CAD and PDM solutions
- They capture design rules both automatically and by user definition
- They allow rules to be customized and adapted
- They provide a user interface that integrates systems, rules, models, and data that are relevant to accomplishing a specific task at a specific time RPM is an integral part of a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) environment that supports product development activities. CIMdata defines PLM as:
A strategic business approach that applies a consistent set of business solutions in support of the collaborative creation, management, dissemination, and use of product definition information across the extended enterprise, and spanning from product concept to end of life--integrating people, processes, business systems, and information.
RPM exists within the PLM environment as an essential tool to capture and manage access to an organization's historical product definition knowledge base--information that typically is not captured by CAD and other components of current PLM environments. RPM provides a bridge between past product development efforts and future designs. It helps companies capture their intellectual value added in product design and provides that knowledge to product designers. This means that new designs can be accomplished more quickly, since designers can work faster without having to worry that they are re-inventing items that have been designed previously.
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