Automated generation of engineering rationale, knowledge and intent representations during the product life cycle

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges in engineering design and manufacturing environments is the effective capture of and decoding of tacit knowledge. Fundamental to Life Cycle Engineering is the capture of engineering information and knowledge created at all stages of the product development process, from conceptual design through to product support and disposal. Consider thisthe amount of vital information and knowledge lost when key design personnel retire-hence the need to capture meta-cognitive task-related strategies, particularly to support knowledge reuse and training. Many methods have been tried and tested with the successful few found to be very time consuming and expensive to implement and carry out; consequently, there is a need to investigate alternative paradigms for knowledge and information capture. This paper reports on a current industrial case study on knowledge capture methods employed by industrial partners in the design and manufacture of a variety of electro-mechanical products. The results suggest the need for new kinds and forms of knowledge capture methods and representation, particularly those associated with individual design engineering tasks. Following the findings, the paper presents a knowledge capture methodology for automatic real-time logging, capture and post-processing of design data from a virtual reality design system. Task-based design experiments were carried out with industrial partners to demonstrate the effective, unobtrusive and automatic capture and representation of various forms of design knowledge and information. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation of knowledge representations were also performed to determine which method was most effective at conveying design knowledge and information for other engineers.

Knowledge Documentation Based on Automatic Identification and Clustering of Change Intentions in CAD Data of Wiring Harnesses

“…The information required to carry out operations between individual stages of the product lifecycle are described as design process knowledge (Chandrasegaran et al, 2013;Hoisl et al, 2008). One method to capture this is presented in the works of (Sung et al, 2009;Sung et al, 2012). In this case, the commands executed by the user are recorded and documented in an XML file.…”

“…In general, capturing the design intent requires additional effort during data acquisition. In Sung et al, 2012, for example, the designer is questioned about the respective reason for his executed action during the design process. Other approaches such as the one by Camba et al, 2014 are based on the use of annotations in the CAD model.…”

A review: virtual assembly of flexible cables based on physical modeling

“…), based on the principle of unconstrained collision. Robinson et al (2007) and Sung et al (2012) developed a real-time cable assembly routing system named COSTAR based on WTK, using a helmetmounted display, data glove, and position tracker; operators could choose, grasp, or move a cable using a data glove. Liu et al (2014) proposed an interactive cable-routing scheme using augmented-reality technology; users could design and operate virtual models in real 3 D space through an interactive operation algorithm based on an operation panel.…”

Automated Coordinate Measuring Machine Inspection Planning Knowledge Capture and Formalization

“…In this research, a range of different representations are suggested aimed at formalizing this kind of knowledge such as motion trajectory graphs, text instructions, IDEF diagrams, storyboards and annotated video clips. As Sung et al [43,57] have proven in previous research, these formats can be used to represent engineering knowledge both for analysis and investigation and as advice for novice engineers and training of inexperienced personnel. To demonstrate this, the strategy for aligning a component and measuring the true position of a central hole was captured and formalized using different formats.…”