Organizational knowledge encapsulation and re-use in collaborative product development

This paper discusses the theoretical aspects and applications of a novel methodology for exploiting a knowledge management editor tool to structure organizational knowledge and integrate it with product development activities. An organizational knowledge framework for capturing and representing manufacturing know-how has been developed using an ontological approach. The captured knowledge is converted into the industry-standard eXtensible mark-up language (XML) and then shared within a web-centric product data management (PDM) system to support a collaborative and distributed product development environment. The key business benefit of adopting such an approach arises from the closer integration between the key technical and business activities taking place during early design. In particular the effectiveness of decision making is increased.