Design Navigator System: A Case Study in Improving Product Development Through Improved Information Management

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the Design Navigator system being developed for the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head. This system addresses the following three information management needs. First, it captures all the relevant information being generated during the product development process in a computer-interpretable form. This eliminates information loss from the design process. Second, it builds fully interconnected information models. Thus ensuring full connectivity between requirements and specifications to various parts and assemblies in the design. Third, it offers multiple modes of searching and retrieving design information in an intuitive and convenient manner. By supporting functionality-based queries, change-based queries, geometry-based queries, and visual navigation of the entire product database, the Design Navigator system is expected to offer maximum flexibility and power to the designers to meet their diverse information retrieval needs.