Knowledge Enabled Engineering Systems in Industrial Product Development - Towards Cross Company Collaboration

The actual product ownership often remains with the manufacturer as functional (total care)products emerge in aerospace business agreements. The business risk is then transferred to themanufacturer why downstream knowledge needs to be available in the concept phase toconsider all product life cycle aspects. The aim of this work is to study how amultidisciplinary design tool can be used to embed downstream processes for conceptualdesign and evaluation allowing simulation of life cycle properties. A knowledge enabledengineering approach was used to capture the engineering activities for design and evaluationof jet engine component flanges. For every design change, cost of manufacturing operations,maintenance and performance aspects can be directly assessed. The design tool assures thatthe engineering activities are performed accordingly to company design specification whichcreates a better control over the process quality. It also creates a better understanding enablingthe engineers to optimize the concept in real time from an overall product life cycle view. Thenew tool will be the base for optimize the total product system and will be used not onlybetween companies but also between product development departments in large globalcompanies.