All companies accumulate knowledge over time. Companies that are able to capture and reuse this knowledge benefit from faster product development times and substantial cost reductions. The process of capturing product design knowledge and then reusing it is known as Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE). Your company can also benefit from KBE, but “how would you go about implementing a KBE solution and where would you begin” are very important questions.

It is quite possible that your company has been using KBE in an informal way and you may have not been aware of it. In fact, many companies are already capturing and reusing knowledge via informal KBE solutions such as spreadsheets and other electronic documents. And as we all know spreadsheets are good for automating processes, which is in itself very helpful. However, informal KBE solutions are generally attempts to automate only bits of a process and do not represent a complete solution.

Despite their limitations understanding what informal KBE solutions your company has been using is a good starting point for implementing a complete KBE solution. For example, what if instead of having several spreadsheets that automate only small parts of the design process you could have one database that contains all this information; and further to this, what if this database could link to your CAD system and automatically generate drawings for new product iterations. You could start to create this master database by adding to it the information from your existing spreadsheets. Note that this is not wishful thinking; in fact many companies are already doing this right now and benefiting from the competitive advantages of having implemented a KBE solution. Why not make your company the next success story?

- by Joseph Vera