Susan Finger - Böcker

Computer aided design (CAD) technology plays a key role in advanced manufacturing environment. This work extends the concept of intelligent CAD to knowledge intensive CAD. The concept advocates that intensive life-cycle knowledge regarding products and design processes must be incorporated into the centre of the CAD architecture. Knowledge intensive CAD focuses on the systematization and sharing of knowledge across the life-cycle stages and organizational boundaries.

This text aims to extend the concept of intelligent CAD (computer-aided design) to the concept of "knowledge intensive engineering". The concept advocates that intensive life-cycle knowledge regarding products and design processes must be incorporated in the centre of the CAD architecture. It focuses on the systemization and sharing of knowledge across the life-cycle stages and organizational boundaries. The fields covered in this text include: computer-aided design and manufacture (CAD/CAM), engineering design research, artificial intelligence and knowledge-based systems, computer science, particularly distributed systems, and software engineering.

This work is based on the premise that life-cycle knowledge regarding the product and design process must be incorporated in the centre of CAD architecture. It focuses on the systematization and sharing of knowledge of many types in many places and is concerned with knowledge management over product life-cycle. The topics covered here include: ontology; knowledge-intensive CAD (KIC); knowledge-intensive design (KID); and knowledge representation for KIC. The papers represent some of the proceedings of the Third Workshop on Knowledge Intensive CAD, sponsored by Working Group 5.2 of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held on December 1--4, 1998 in Tokyo, Japan.

In 1984, Nam Sub, who was then the Assistant Director for Engineering at the National Science Foundation (NSF), created the Design Theory and Methodology Program. Among his goals in creating this program were to develop a science of engineering design and to establish design as an accepted field of engineering research. From 1984 to 1986 this program was directed by Susan Finger; from 1986 to the present Jack Dixon has been the director. The program itself has covered a broad range of disciplines, from chemical engineering to architecture, and a broad range of research paradigms, from psychological experiments to mathematical models. The present volume is based on the second NSF Grantee Workshop on Design Theory and Methodology, called Design Theory '88, which was held June 2-5, 1988 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, USA. It is, however, not strictly a proceedings since it includes some material that was not presented at a the Workshop and since it omits some papers and discussions that were presented at the Workshop. At the Workshop, invited speakers presented overviews of six different research areas based on summaries submitted in advance by the grantees of the Design Theory and Methodology Program. Since most of the speakers were not supported under the NSF program they brought fresh views to it. The other papers in this book were submitted directly to this volume and were not presented at the Workshop.

Computer Aided Design (CAD) technology plays a key role in today's advanced manufacturing environment. To reduce the time to market, achieve zero defect quality the first time, and use available production and logistics resources effectively, product and design process knowledge covering the whole product life-cycle must be used throughout product design. Once generated, this intensive design knowledge should be made available to later life-cycle activities. Due to the increasing concern about global environmental issues and rapidly changing economical situation worldwide, design must exhibit high performance not only in quality and productivity, but also in life-cycle issues, including extended producer's liability. These goals require designers and engineers to use various kinds of design knowledge intensively during product design and to generate design information for use in later stages of the product life-cycle such as production, distribution, operation, maintenance, reclamation, and recycling. Therefore, future CAD systems must incorporate product and design process knowledge, which are not explicitly dealt with in the current systems, in their design tools and design object models.