Abstract
It is widely recognized that knowledge is an important asset for most companies. During the last decade, knowledge structuring has gained interest by industry with configuration systems as one of the most widespread means. Commercial configuration systems support modular configuration, where a product can be configured by composing a set of predefined modules. The care of a configuration system is a product model containing engineering knowledge on allowable configurations of modules from a product platfarm. However, a product platfarm is not static, but evolves over time with the introduction of new modules. Consequently, engineering knowledge must be maintained in configuration systems. In this paper, it is argued that commercial configuration systems do not sufficiently support knowledge maintenance, since the applied modelling technique does not incite far preservation of the original engineering knowledge. An interaction object is proposed for structuring engineering knowledge on configuration of modules. An example of a cone joint is used to illustrate the modelling power of the proposed interaction object. Finally, it is argued to distinguish behavioural and structural product models in configuration systems, since customers are not in need of a structure, but rather in the behaviour of a structure.
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Jensen, T. (2001). Preservation of Engineering Knowledge in Configuration Systems. In: Riitahuhta, A., Pulkkinen, A. (eds) Design for Configuration. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-56905-0_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-56905-0_16
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