MICA-Graph: a tool for managing text and sketches during design processes

Abstract

Concurrent Engineering (CE) approaches depend heavily on efficient and reliable communication between the people involved in the design, engineering, industrialisation and manufacturing of products. To address this need, we propose an approach to facilitate joint solutions to product design problems within a CE integrated team by supporting textual and graphical information in the form of sketches. We introduce a new and ergonomic groupware tool working on a network of PCs: MICA-Graph. This involves the exchange of technical messages (textual and graphical) and capitalisation of relevant knowledge. Our tool supports the description of technical problems, message exchange among users, monitoring of the problem solving process and the documentation of technical solutions. It also provides facilities to structure and archive knowledge and know-how learned from new methods of design sketch retrieval. The tool has been developed and evaluated, primarily to feed back manufacturing knowledge to design teams in the context of product change requests.