A Process Improvement Approach to Capitalize on Manufacturing Experience in Engineering Design

The ability to capitalize on company knowledge and experience earned in various projects is recognized as key assets in the competition on the growing global market. Methods and tools are constantly evolving, still there is a frustration over repeated design flaws and design engineers has a difficult task to find and use manufacturing experience from earlier projects. This paper outlines a process improvement approach where the engineering process is described and analysed to find bottlenecks. Examples from other engineering processes are presented along with a prototype of a knowledge application to resolve identified issues with the manufacturing feedback process. Experience and knowledge are closely related, hence a knowledge life cycle explain the different steps with a "capturing" and "deploying" side. The manufacturing feedback processes is analysed where search & find together with contextualisation of experience data are recognised as key mechanisms. A knowledge application is presented that presents experience data from different repositories in a way that is logic for the receiver. This reduces the lead-time and increase the quality of the feedback process.