The management of concept design knowledge in modern product development organizations

Modern product design and development organizations have to adopt flexible and dynamic working arrangements to meet the increasingly varied demands of their customers. Knowledge, particularly during the early stages of design, is fundamental to the success of the total product design and development process. This knowledge should be easy for the design team to locate and access, it should be relevant to the design teams activities, and it should be in a format that the design team can use. To this end, this paper describes WebCADET, a WWW-based knowledge server, which supports designers during the early stages of their design decision-making activities. WebCADET aims to address some of the most significant knowledge management issues in modern design enterprises by providing effective and efficient mechanisms for the capture, storage and management of concept design knowledge.