A Knowledge Management Approach to Support Concurrent Engineering in Wiring Harness Development

Abstract

Engineers are confronted with the challenge of processing an increasing amount of data within a continuous shrinking time frame. Due to the fact that it is usually not possible for engineers with the current methods to distribute the knowledge gained accordingly resulting in knowledge being lost in due course of the product life cycle. Especially with products such as the automotive wiring harness, which is highly complex and subject to a large amount of changes, this can lead to missing data, inconsistencies and repeated errors during the product life cycle. One approach to support engineers is the use of a knowledge management system, capturing knowledge during the development process, identifying possible use cases and integrating them into the corresponding data sets. This paper gives an overview of current problems in the cross model concurrent engineering of automotive wiring harnesses. Based on these, the specific requirements for virtual geometry development of the wiring harness using CAD are derived and compared to the state of the art. Furthermore, an approach for a knowledge management system for CAD data fulfilling the corresponding requirements is described. Thereby, the individual steps are listed to be carried out for the realization of this system.