Unification of Design, Manufacturing Capability, and Service Knowledge in

Collaborative Product Development

Dr James Gao and Prof Peter Sackett

School of Industrial and Manufacturing Science, Cranfield University

PART ONE: PREVIOUS TRACK RECORD AND PROJECT BACKGROUND

Track Record of the Investigators and Expertise of Collaborators

Dr Gao, Senior Lecturer, has published over 110 papers covering design and manufacturing knowledge
capture and representation, product data and life-cycle management, enterprise system integration, feature-
based design and manufacturing planning [1]. Dr Gao was the principal investigator of the EPSRC
INDEMAND project (GR/R35148) entitled 'Distributed and Collaborative Product Development and
Manufacturing Knowledge Management' with University of Durham. Cranfield’s work focuses on the
development of a distributed and collaborative design/communication management environment [2,3]. Dr
Gao is directing the IMRC project, ‘Knowledge Representation and Re-use for Predictive Design and
Manufacturing Evaluation’ with Loughborough University. He directed EPSRC project (GR/L66236)
entitled 'Functional Specification for Computer Aided Assembly Planning' which was awarded Outstanding
by EPSRC assessment panel. This project resulted in advanced methodologies and tools for product
configuration and assembly planning within a Product Data Management and CAD environment [4,5]. Dr
Gao’s recently completed project fully sponsored by LCS group has resulted in a manufacturing knowledge
capture and progressive product evaluation system for conceptual design [6,7]. Dr Gao directed a Teaching
Company Scheme with Design Rule Ltd. The methodologies developed had been sold to a major customer
before the end of the project.

Professor Sackett is a renowned world-class expert with over 160 publications and heads the Department of
Enterprise Integration in which this project is to be carried out. The Enterprise Integration Department has a
high profile in knowledge management and application of Information Technology for the manufacturing
and service industries. A large number of projects in this department are funded by leading international
companies (such as BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Ford, Nissan and BOC Group), the European Union and the
UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) through its Innovative Manufacturing
Research Centre (IMRC) at Cranfield University. The Enterprise Integration Department provides the ideal
research environment for this project.

Industrial Collaborator - Rolls Royce Plc is the second largest aero engine manufacturer in the world. The
Manufacturing Engineering organisation of the Rolls-Royce civil aero engines business is based in Derby;
they have recently launched the Process Excellence Initiative. The initiative has a wide remit for
manufacturing processes and practice improvement. They are already working with Enterprise Integration
through a sponsored PhD Researcher. Rolls Royce has the vision to use knowledge management across the
product lifecycle, interacting with design, suppliers and service functions. Current practice is to rely on the
human understanding to extract the manufacturing engineering knowledge. The Company wants to
collaborate with the Cranfield research team to determine how design and manufacturing knowledge could
be extracted from and made available through both Information Technology systems and human experts to
inform design, cost, manufacturing and other engineering functions. The representation model would
contribute to their underlying manufacturing knowledge structure.
Industrial Collaborator - BOC Edwards has over 60% of the world market in industrial vacuum products.
The Company has long been working with Cranfield in particular the Department of Enterprise Integration.
The Company’s products depend on leading edge design and manufacturing technologies. BOC Edwards
has very similar manufacturing engineering challenges encountered by Rolls Royce, although they are in
different markets and have different product scale and scope. We already have a sponsored PhD project with
BOC Edwards in process capability and tolerance analysis to support design. The Company employs a large
number of highly qualified experts ensuring their world leading position in vacuum technology.

The technical and management expertise of both collaborators will be a valuable and complimentary direct
input into the proposed project.

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 PART TWO: RESEARCH PROPOSAL

Introduction

Collaborative product design, development, manufacture and service is becoming increasingly important in
globalised competitive manufacturing. Traditional model-based knowledge representation has proved
unsuitable in effectively supporting collaborative development of complex products in this environment.

When manufacturing engineering is organised across the extended enterprise the engineering knowledge
becomes fragmented, disconnected, insecure and often difficult to capture and maintain. Original Equipment
Manufacturers will own part or all of the product manufacturing knowledge, they will want to own, retain
and control the product design knowledge and the opportunity to service and support the products in the
market over the full life cycle including disposal. In complex engineering products like aero-engines, the
service component is a major part of the revenue stream in the product lifecycle. To safeguard their
intellectual property and competitive market position there is a need for the Original Equipment
Manufacturers to have access to the knowledge of all the manufacturing process capability (including those
across the enterprise) and requirements and feedback from customers. The research challenge is to propose a
set of methodologies to facilitate the provision of appropriate manufacturing engineering knowledge to
engineers within the different players in the Extended Enterprise respecting the different intellectual property
agreements and functional requirements. For the extended and multi-cultural enterprise, unification of the
knowledge definition and the process of managing knowledge become paramount.

Internet based applications have significantly enhanced functionality, communication and document
management within and between enterprises and their customers and business partners. Commercial
software vendors are promoting pre configured solutions to support generic information needs. The
availability of these multiple platforms potentially allows the storage and delivery of vast amounts of
knowledge. In current technology, the engineering knowledge workers are not provided with context
specific knowledge filters to present them with information appropriate to their professional work function.
How much information they access and use depends on their individual perception and understanding on
what they need for their tasks. Thus there are differences in the quality of the decisions and work, between
different players in the Extended Enterprise. At a technical level, existing systems lack cross-system inter-
operability. The pre-requisite is to understand the manufacturing and service knowledge with respect to
specific industrial applications and their needs, and how to standardise the knowledge framework so that it
can be shared by various knowledge users across the application environment.

The proposed research will provide an innovative approach to knowledge management methodologies to
unify the knowledge within a collaborative, global engineering and manufacturing enterprise environment
for complex products. The research focuses on the unified feature-based design, manufacturing, and product
service knowledge. An enabling generic process-based knowledge representation and management
framework will provide the context specific knowledge and filters to control access and provide high
function-specific usability. The methodologies will be evaluated through the creation of demonstrators using
available ICT solutions and support in the sites of the industrial collaborators.

The proposed project is an important part of the Department’s research portfolio in IMRC Enablers. In
particular it compliments on-going research projects, such as ‘knowledge representation and re-use for
predictive design and manufacturing evaluation’ (IMRC 24), ‘distributed and collaborative product
development and manufacturing knowledge management’ (IMRC 11), ‘feature based knowledge
management framework to support collaborative product development and service’ (Rolls-Royce) and
‘building a knowledge management strategy for product development and manufacturing’ (Vaillant
Hepworth Group).

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Background of the Proposed Work

Commercial interests may hinder the free flow of the knowledge. From a technology point of view, the
seamless exchange of knowledge in engineering and manufacture remains a serious research challenge.
Despite many years of research in manufacturing, process planning and design knowledge, the most mature
international standard, STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Data), has no successful component for
knowledge exchange. The Process Specification Language, a US NIST initiative, is developing a robust
process ontology for manufacturing systems integration. The international standard initiative, MANDATE,
aims to define a set of standard definitions to describe manufacturing equipment features. Manufacturing
capability and knowledge is an active field with significant innovation at the international level. However,
these initiatives do not meet the requirements of dynamic knowledge in contemporary global manufacturing.

The European Union's Framework Five Programme had several projects that dealt with some aspects of the
proposed project under the Information Societies Technology Programme. These include CLOCKWORK
[8], an ICT tool for collaborative design knowledge sharing and problem solving and ISTFORCE [9], an
ICT tool to enable knowledge oriented concurrent engineering in the construction industry. P2People [10]
developed an open collaborative framework and application for de-decentralised collaboration, but without
implementing specific functionality for engineering knowledge management. SMART SME [11]
implemented inter-enterprise integration and collaborative knowledge management between manufacturing
oriented SMEs. However, integration is at an abstract level that does not sufficiently support collaborative
manufacturing engineering. EDIBOLD-SCS similarly developed new tools and methods for manufacturing
SMEs to organise inter-enterprise logistics and product management and created best-practice solutions for
interaction between enterprises and their customers. KNOW IT was developed as a decision-support
system and enterprise collaboration and workflow based lifecycle management system. It is an Open
Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management solution, that is however already
available in the open-source domain in the form of Compiere ERP [12]. However, these research projects
do not address the functionality required by the complex product domain.

National programmes outside the UK include the STEPSet [13] research group from the Russian Academy
of Sciences, which proposed the construction of enterprise wide knowledge management solutions around
the ISO-STEP standard. The Europe-wide EUREKA programme for 'market oriented R&D' has financed
the TIMESHARE [14] project to enable intelligent, collaborative production management for suppliers.
The IKF [15] framework produced generic ontologies and knowledge-sharing infrastructure within a
distributed-architecture and has been used for various disciplines, including manufacturing. The
international consortium Intelligent Manufacturing Systems have projects such as GLOBEMEN [16] that
defined open architectures and test systems for global virtual manufacturing enterprises. Whilst these
projects are relevant, their primary focus is on the alignment of the manufacturing capabilities via the
virtual enterprise concept.

In the UK the EPSRC project [17] aims to develop a range of technologies for knowledge management.
The approach is evaluated using testbed applications. EPSRC project [18] aims to develop a methodology
for the live capture of reusable project knowledge that reflects both the organisational human dimensions of
knowledge management and exploits the benefits of web-based technologies. EPSRC project [19] deals
with collaborative medical problem solving using knowledge services provided via the e-Science Grid. The
Managing Knowledge Spaces project [20] includes research with industrial partners from diverse sectors.
The primary aim is the development of a taxonomy and diagnostic tool that will help managers to quickly
understand the ramifications of differing project team designs and associated knowledge management
processes, for project performance in different industrial contexts. DTI project [21] aims to develop a
communication model for knowledge management (capture, distillation and distribution) between
construction companies and their supply chains. In this process it investigates how other industries manage
their corporate knowledge and assesses the robustness and measurable benefits of these processes.

From our review, there is considerable effort in knowledge management, principally devoted to generic
business management and the creation of virtual enterprises and networks. There is now a clear
requirement for solutions to the challenges arising during the global product development process. This is a
high risk process, critical to success in world-class UK manufacturing engineering, especially so for high
complexity and high value products. These requirements are addressed by the proposed research project.

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Aims and Objectives

The aim of this research is to develop unified methodologies to capture, represent, and re-use manufacturing
engineering knowledge to support product development in a collaborative enterprise context. Core
technology innovation are the unified feature-based design knowledge, manufacturing capability knowledge,
product service knowledge, and context specific knowledge management filters which ensure authorised
access to the right knowledge for different work functions in the product development process. The
knowledge and generic framework are process-based and enabled by standardised ITC solutions. The step-
by-step research objectives are to:

i) investigate industrial requirements and state-of-the-art enabling technologies for this complex
engineering product development in global manufacturing environment and propose a generic
process-based knowledge management framework to support collaborative product development;
ii) develop unified methodologies to represent the feature-based design knowledge within the generic
process-based framework which embraces design rules, previous project and product knowledge and
internal/external engineering knowledge;
iii) develop unified methodologies to represent the manufacturing capability knowledge within the
generic process-based framework which includes best manufacturing methods, process capability
and test data, to support failure mode and effect analysis, design evaluation and cost estimation;
iv) develop unified methodologies to represent the product service knowledge within the generic
process-based framework which includes initial customer requirements, customer feedback and
suggestions, product in-service performance, failures, and any design-related problems; and
v) develop a proof of concept pilot, with a selected range of available ICT systems, evaluate it with the
industrial collaborators and disseminate the results of the research to academics and industrialists.

The scope of the proposed research project is the design and manufacture of complex engineered products
with high performance and safety critical service requirements. The methodologies will be applied and
evaluated for high-added value rotational parts.

Industrial Collaboration and Beneficiaries

Rolls-Royce plc will provide £44,000 and substantial in-kind support to the project. The Company is a
strategic research partner of the University. The proposed project coincides with the Company’s
Manufacturing Excellence Initiative which aims to develop a collaboration framework for manufacturing
knowledge, process capability and standard features management for the entire enterprise and be part of its
product lifecycle management strategy. The Company will benefit from the project in that it will share
research on the methodology for standardisation of product features, manufacturing capability and
knowledge management. The Company will share its world-class manufacturing and project management
expertise with the Cranfield team.

BOC Edwards will provide substantial in kind support to the project. The Company wishes to become a
strategic research partner of the University and has been working with Cranfield University on a number of
MSc and PhD projects over many years. They are currently carrying out projects in design and
manufacturing knowledge capture and representation in conjunction with their CAD/CAM/IT systems. The
academic research will provide insight and methodologies to support their on-going industrial research and
development.

A significant publication programme is planned to disseminate the generic research to the wider engineering
and research community. The project has a clear development path from several of our current IMRC
Enabler programmes and it offers substantial opportunities for future Enablers research.

Novelty of the Project

The key novelty of the project is the effort to specify and develop a generic and process based approach to
the management of design (feature-based), manufacturing capability and service knowledge, to support
collaborative product development. The work utilises leading design and manufacturing knowledge
management research and incorporates emerging standards practice in collaborative design. Unified feature-

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based design knowledge, and especially manufacturing capability and service knowledge, and design
evaluation and cost analysis are highly innovative. In particular, the process-based knowledge management,
as opposed to traditional model-based knowledge management, would be a significant step forward. The
research will embed the quality and re-usability of the knowledge to be managed through the context specific
knowledge filter mechanisms. The project will exploit the access to the leading edge knowledge and
technologies of our world-class industrial collaborators.

Research Approach

This project has significant technical and project management support from Rolls Royce and BOC Edwards.
The research has the full involvement of several Rolls Royce research teams including personnel of its
Manufacturing Excellence, Product Lifecycle Management, Computer Aided Engineering and Knowledge
Management initiatives. The overall research approach to be adopted will be founded in a state of the art
literature and practice review informed by case studies. At the tactic level, knowledge and requirement
capturing methodologies such as brainstorming, planned interviews, questionnaires, and standardised
templates that have been successfully used in various research council funded projects directed by the
applicants will be used in this project. ICT and knowledge management tools such as EDS Unigraphics
PLM Solution, ontology-based knowledge based system Protégé, process modelling tools such as UML and
IDEF, emerging intelligent search and reasoning tools such as Etopia and Autonomy and Web-based
programming tools and standards such as XML and RDF, and product data standard STEP and process
specification language (PSL) will be considered to implement the framework and its constituent knowledge
bases. BOC Edwards uses Catia and its related PLM system, the methodologies to be developed will be
compared with their implementation.

Methodology to be Developed

The methodology to be developed is illustrated in Figure 1. Feature-based design, manufacturing capability

and service knowledge will be captured, unified and represented, as shown in the bottom of Figure 1. The
knowledge is unified in that it is configured for use, validated and evaluated by all stake holders across the
extended enterprise and thus can be shared and re-used by different tasks of the product development
process. Context specific filtering mechanism will enable the provision of required knowledge to the
different tasks of collaborative product development process and control the level and format of the
information that is authorised to different users. The tasks of the product development process are modelled,
and for each task, context-based knowledge is captured and maintained. Standard ICT tools will be used to
represent the unified knowledge, to implement the context specific filters, and to model the dynamic product
development process and context knowledge that is associated with individual tasks.

Context Context Context

knowledge knowledge knowledge
Product
Development Concept Manuf-
…. …. Service
Tasks design acturing
….. …..
Standard ICT tools

Context specific filters

Unified Unified
Unified
design service
manuf.
knowledge knowledge
knowledge

Figure 1: The methodology to be developed

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The methodology to be developed is fundamentally different from traditional ‘model-based’ data/knowledge
management in that a ‘process and also task based’ knowledge management approach is used, which allows
knowledge workers across the extended enterprise to access the right level and format of knowledge that is
authorised to them, for use in the context of specific tasks. The ‘design knowledge’ includes feature-based
product configuration, design intent and supplier information to support different stages of the product
lifecycle process. Similarly, the ‘manufacturing capability knowledge’ includes best practice manufacturing
methods, manufacturing capability of internal and external facilities, and impact on product cost. The
‘service knowledge’ includes initial customer requirements, feedback from customers about product
performance in-service.

Workplan

The tasks to be undertaken are scheduled in Table 1. The project requires a full-time research fellow and a
project student for 3 years. The research fellow will work on the ‘unified feature-based design and service
knowledge’ and the modelling of the product development process and context knowledge, as shown in
Figure 1. The research student will work on the ‘unified manufacturing capability knowledge and
methodologies for cost and product evaluation’. Both the research fellow and project student will develop
context specific filters for the knowledge they will implement, to be accessed by respective knowledge users.
It should be noted that a full-time PhD student fully sponsored by Rolls Royce will work alongside this
project. The tasks and key milestone phases of the project are shown in Table 1 and explained below.

Phase I (Task 1): the researchers are recruited, introduced to the department, the university and industrial
collaborators. An intensive literature survey and software investigation will be carried out. Computer
software and hardware will be installed and learned. Deliverables: A review report will be produced and a
formal presentation will be given by the researchers.

Phase II (Task 2), Industrial requirements for knowledge management, unification of feature-based design,
manufacturing capability and service knowledge representation methodologies, and system integration will
be captured, analysed, and benchmarked. Deliverables: A report will be produced and formal presentation
given by the researchers to the project management team.

Phase III (Task 3&4). The research fellow will capture design, service knowledge, product development
process and task specific context knowledge, and propose feature-based representation methodology.
International and business specific standards will be assessed and bench-marked. The research student will
capture manufacturing capability knowledge and propose methodologies for cost analysis and product
evaluation. A report and presentation will be given to the project management team.

Phase IV (Task 5&6): The research fellow will develop/implement the feature-based design, and service
knowledge bases, and model the product development process and context knowledge for specific tasks,
using standard ICT tools. The research student will develop the manufacturing capability knowledge base
and methodologies for cost analysis and product evaluation: At the end of this phase, the researchers will
submit a report describing the methodologies, and also to demonstrate the implementation to the project
management team. Two conference papers will be produced to publish the results of the developed
methodologies to wider audience.

Phase V (Task 7): Both researchers will develop the context specific filters to enable their knowledge based
to be accessed by respective users for the tasks of the product development process. The developed
methodologies will be integrated, evaluated and benchmarked with industrial collaborators. The result will
be the first version of integrated system. Deliverables: At the end of this stage, two journal papers will be
completed and the solution will be documented and presented to the project management team.

Phase VI (Task 8): Major industrial case studies will be carried out. Results will be demonstrated to
collaborators and published to national and international conferences. Feedback from collaborators will be
used to further develop/improve the solutions.

Phase VII (Task 9): the framework and its constituent knowledge bases and methodologies will be
improved and finalized. Two journal papers will be produced.

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Phase VIII (Task 10), final documentation will be produced including full user guide, descriptions of
methodologies, implementation, and results of case studies.

Deliverables

Main deliverables include: (1) a process-based knowledge management framework and integration
methodology within the global manufacturing environment; (2) captured, unified feature-based design,
manufacturing process capability, and service knowledge bases, (3) methodologies for cost and design
evaluation using the above knowledge bases; (4) methodologies that can be used for modelling dynamic
collaborative product development process and the context knowledge associated with specific tasks; (5)
context specific filters that can control access of the unified knowledge bases by different knowledge users
across the extended enterprise; (6) an illustrative industrial case study and (7) published high quality
journal and conference papers.

Dissemination of Results

The research outcome will be published at national and international conferences and professional journals.
In particular, the strong relevance of the work to the collaborating companies creates ideal opportunities for
the commercial exploitation of the research. The collaborators will also assist in transferring the technology
to their sites and customers. Wider dissemination can be achieved via seminars, workshops and open days
and through the university’s links with UK and International research groups. The outcome of the research
will be transferred to postgraduate students through the education programmes of the University.

Project Management and Risks

The two academic investigators have overall responsibility for the successful delivery of the project, with
two representatives from Rolls Royce and one representative from BOC Edwards as formal members of the
management committee. Monthly review meetings will be held involving the two researchers and the
management committee. Other researchers from the collaborating companies whose work is related to the
proposed project will be invited to attend the review meetings as appropriate. At end of each phase as
scheduled in the workplan (Table 1), a major review will be held, and Workplan will be updated.

This is a high risk research project addressing a complex problem which has been subject to a significant
international research effort. This risk is contained by drawing on our extensive in-house expertise, sharply
focussing and restricting the product application domain, accessing and exploiting the deep engineering
knowledge resident in our collaborators.

Resources Requested

This project requires 1 full-time Research Fellow and 1 full-time project student (PhD) for 3 years.
Necessary equipment includes two computers for the 2 main researchers and ICT software tools plus
maintenance and training. The cost of travelling to collaborators to capture requirements and knowledge is
significant. The project team members also need to attend international conferences to present their work and
to communicate with international researchers. Industrial contribution will be mainly used to top up student
bursary, tuition fees and also contingency.

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References

1. Case K., Gao J. X. and Gindy N. N. Z., ‘The implementation of a feature-based component representation for
CAD/CAM integration’, Proc of IMechE, Vol 208, Part B, J. of Engineering Manufacture, 1993. pp71-80. ISBN
0954-4054
2. J X Gao, H Aziz, P G Maropoulos and W M Cheung, ‘Application of PDM Technologies for Enterprise
Integration’, International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Vol. 16, No. 7-8, pp491-500.
3. H Aziz, J X Gao, P G Maropoulos and W M Cheung, ‘A design environment for product knowledge management
and data exchange’, CIRP Design Seminar, Grebe, France, 12-14t May 2003.
4. J X Gao and N W Bowland, ‘A PDM Integrated Product Configuration and Assembly Process Planning
Environment’, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, part B, Journal of Engineering Manufacture.
Vol. 216, 2002. Pp407-418.
5. J. X. Gao and N. W. Bowland, 'A Product Configuration-driven Assembly Planning System within a Product Data
Management Environment', International Journal of Production Research, Vol.40, No.9, 2002, Pp2041-2051.
6. R. Sharma and J X Gao, 'Implementation of STEP 224 in an Automatic Manufacturing Planning System',
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, part B, Journal of Engineering Manufacture. Vol 216,
2002, pp1277-1289.
7. R Sharma and J X Gao, ‘A Progressive Design and Manufacturing Evaluation System Incorporating STEP AP224’,
International Journal of Computers in Industry, Vol 47, Issue 2, 2002, pp155-167.
8. Zdrahal, Z., Mulholland, P., Domingue, J. and Hatala, M. (2000) Sharing engineering design knowledge in a
distributed environment. Journal of Behaviour and Information Technology, 19 (3) 189-200.
9. Robert Balder, ISTFORCE Intelligent Services and Tools for Concurrent Engineering, IST-1999-11508, 1/3/2002.
10. Michael-Gerassimos Strintzis, P2People, IST-2001-38458, 2003.
11. Stathes Xeromerites, SMART SME, IST-1999-20744, 2002.
12. Compiere ERP software, www.compiere.org 2003.
13. Vitaly Semenov, Andrew Bazhan, Sergey Morozov, Oleg Tarlapan, Maria Nikolaenko CASE technology for
building enterprise-wide information systems based on STEP standards",, Proceedings of IV international
conference - Information technologies for CALS, IT+CALS'2002, Russia, Korolev, 2002, pp 96-99.
14. Team based iconographic multimedia environment for sharing and re-use of information,EUREKA E!1629,
10/10/2002.
15. Information and knowledge framework IKF, EUREKA E!2235, 2003.
16. Martin Ollus,Global engineering and manufacturing enterprise networks (GLOBEMEN), IMS research project
99004, http://globemen.vtt.fi , 2003.
17. GR/N15764/01, Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT), University
of Southampton, October 2000 – September 2006
18. GR/S47595/01, Capture and Reuse of Project Knowledge in Construction (CAPRIKON), University of Newcastle
upon Tyne, November 2003 – October 2005
19. GR/R85167/01, Grid enabled knowledge services: collaborative problem solving environments in medical
informatics, University of Oxford, October 2001 –October 2004
20. GR/R54132/01, Managing Knowledge Spaces: Mapping the Effects of Dispersed Team working on Project
Performance, University of Brighton, March 2002 - February 2004
21. The Application of Learning on Construction Projects to Provide Innovation and Best Practice Solutions, July 2002
– February 2004, TDI Projects.

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 Table 1: Outline workplan showing tasks undertaken by the research team

Months
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

1. Induction to universities/collaborators,
literature review, software tools training
2. Capture industrial requirements for design,
manufacturing and service knowledge
management, and standard ICT tools
3. Capture unified design, service knowledge
and context specific knowledge, and propose
representation methodology
4. Capture manufacturing capability knowledge
and propose methodology for cost analysis and
design evaluation
5. Develop unified feature-based design and
service knowledge base, model development
process and context knowledge for tasks
6. Develop manufacturing capability
knowledge base and methodologies for cost
analysis and design evaluation
7. Develop context specific filters and integrate
and bench-mark the results of above tasks and
produce the 1st version integrated system.
8. Major industrial case study and evaluation of
the solution developed with collaborators
9. Further develop/evaluate the methodologies
and solutions and disseminate the results

10. Final project documentation

Phase I Phase II Phase III Phase IV Phase V Phase VI Phase VII Phase
Report of Captured design, Developed generic First version of Completed industrial case VIII
literature Report of manufacturing knowledge management studies and results of Finalised
Tasks for Research Fellow – integrated system solutions and Final
survey. industrial capability,service framework, with design, industrial evaluation of the Reports
Software requirement knowledge and manufacturing capability, developed solution. methodologies
Tasks for Research Student - 2 journal papers
tools representation & service knowledge bases.
installed & evaluation 2 conference papers 2 journal
2 conference papers
learned methodologies. papers

Milestone