The NIST Design Repository Project

Abstract

Modern engineering industry is relying more and more on the use of knowledge in product development. This paper advocates design repositories as a natural progression from traditional design databases to systems that are created to more actively support knowledge-based design. In contrast to traditional design databases, design repositories serve not only as archives, but as repositories of heterogeneous information that are designed to enable representation, capture, sharing, and reuse of corporate design knowledge. This paper describes the NIST Design Repository Project, an ongoing project within the Engineering Design Technologies Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The project objectives are to develop a computational framework for the creation of design repositories, and a proof-of-concept prototype to demonstrate their benefits. A number of research issues associated with the envisioned role of design repositories in industry are addressed. The current state of the project and its implementation are presented.