Mapping Knowledge in Product Development through Process Modelling

The product development capability is a core competence in a company, and the product development process is a knowledge-intensive process. The evolution of engineering design shows that knowledge is a key factor of a successful product development. From the 70's in the last century, artificial intelligence has been introduced into this field. It evolves from expert system through knowledge-based system to current knowledge management. Knowledge taxonomy is a core component in knowledge management. A new approach of mapping knowledge in product development through process modelling is proposed. Product development process modelling can help people structure knowledge and the employees linking to each activity in the product development process. According to the analysis of product development process models, there exist three basic kinds of objects: product states, process elements, and resources. The state-process-resource model provides available ontologies of knowledge in the product development domain. In this way, knowledge is hierarchically classified into six knowledge subjects: product, product process, process element, method, tool, and application specific domain. Furthermore, each of the knowledge subjects is divided into three types of knowledge: course, practice, and expertise location.