Increasing the amount of knowledge reuse from engineering design repositories

Engineering design is a knowledge-intensive activity that can be supported by knowledge reuse. Knowledge reuse is especially relevant for novice designers that are not familiarized with the specific knowledge of the company. Companies make efforts acquiring and storing their knowledge but this knowledge is usually not applied and reminds unused in the repositories, especially during early phases of design. The reasons for the lack of reuse are still unclear. A shortcoming of current studies about barriers for knowledge reuse is that they do not deepen enough in the barriers existing at the level of designers. More understanding of designers’ needs and behaviours while reusing knowledge from company’s repositories is required. This research presents an approach based on design workshops and interviews in order to gain more understanding on the phenomena. Influent factors for novice designers during reuse from repositories, situations for knowledge reuse and types of knowledge to be reused will be analysed. Based on these insights, an approach to support novice designers for knowledge reuse is proposed. The support will be evaluated in iterative design experiments.     «

Engineering design is a knowledge-intensive activity that can be supported by knowledge reuse. Knowledge reuse is especially relevant for novice designers that are not familiarized with the specific knowledge of the company. Companies make efforts acquiring and storing their knowledge but this knowledge is usually not applied and reminds unused in the repositories, especially during early phases of design. The reasons for the lack of reuse are still unclear. A shortcoming of current studies abo...     »