Knowledge-based Product Development Research Articles

Designing the Collaborative Organization: A Framework for how Collaborative Work, Relationships, and Behaviors Generate Collaborative Capacity

We offer a framework for developing the collaborative workplace, developed through a case study of a subsystem of Intuit Canada, a knowledge-based product development firm known for strong collaboration. Grounded in interviews, observations, informal conversations, and archival data, our framework reveals a series of factors that shape work, relationships, and behaviors to promote collaboration widely. Beyond factors, we uncover what it is about them, the underlying properties that created the conditions for employees to work, relate and contribute collectively. We show how the factors interrelate to create two collaborative subsystems; one fostering widespread alignment around strategic goals and the other fostering locally led interactivity to operationalize those goals. We illustrate how the duality works in practice and conclude with implications for future research and practice.

A knowledge-based product development system in the chemical industry

Because of the large search space involved in ingredient formulation for chemical product development, time spent on the determination of appropriate ingredients constitutes a significant portion of the new product development (NPD) time. Case-based reasoning (CBR) is effective in solving ingredient formulation problems by referring to how similar products were formulated. For some chemical products, sensorial properties, such as smoothness and greasiness, are important attributes. Decision makers tend to use fuzzy terms such as “very smooth” and “slightly greasy” to describe those attributes. Solely using CBR is not robust enough to specify their preferences on those attributes and thus the case retrieval results might not be satisfactory. This paper proposes a knowledge-based product development system (KPDS), hybridizing CBR with fuzzy-based analytic hierarchy process (fuzzy-AHP), to support chemical product development. Chemical product attributes are classified into functional product attributes (FPAs) and sensorial product attributes (SPAs). The desired FPAs are firstly used to filter and retrieve similar past NPD cases in the CBR. When calculating the similarity of the cases retrieved, the SPAs are considered and their weights are derived by fuzzy-AHP so as to identify the most suitable case(s) for problem solving. This paper provides a detailed step-by-step procedure to formulate chemical products according to the desired product properties with the use of the KPDS. It will be of value to other researchers and industrial practitioners who are responsible for chemical product development.

Utilising enterprise knowledge with knowledge-based engineering

The need for enterprises to remain competitive within a growing international market place has seen the use of knowledge-based product development techniques being employed. Techniques such as Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) allow for the capture, storage and reuse of the enterprises' intellectual property and for reduction in the time to create products by the capture of company product and process knowledge and, more importantly, the use of that knowledge in automated or semi-automated KBE applications. This paper will introduce KBE, review from the literature the four dedicated KBE application development techniques employed, and make suggestions for further development to model a company's best practices and the automation of those best practices allowing for the freeing up of a company's human resource to have the time to consider a greater number of alternatives and search for more innovative solutions.

Knowledge-based product development using XML and KCs

As we enter the new millennium, our approach to product development is evolving rapidly. Companies are in the process of creating a distributed design and manufacturing environment that enables integrated product, processes, and protocols development (IP3D). Certain strategies and some specific technologies are required to create such an environment. For instance, effective reuse of enterprise knowledge is a key strategic component of IP3D. To reuse the knowledge, however, we must first capture and maintain it in a persistent manner and then disseminate and share it in a practical manner throughout the development cycle. To do this task efficiently, we need technologies and protocols to define a communication dictionary and implement a user-friendly access interface. In part one [Rezayat M., Computer Aided Design 2000;32:85–96], we showed that such technologies and protocols must be Web-based because of its open standards, ease of use, and ubiquity. In this paper, we review one IP3D strategy referred to as Knowledge-Based Product Development (KBPD) and then take a close look at one Web-based technology, the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), for defining the required interfaces. We also propose use of Key Characteristics (KCs) as a main enabler for defining the ontology. Some examples and scenarios demonstrate the use of KCs and XML as key components for implementation of a KBPD system.

Towards knowledge-based product development: the 3-D CAD model of knowledge creation

This paper argues that new 3-D CAD systems can play a central role in the creation of knowledge-based product development systems. Based on a model of product development and knowledge creation which incorporates 3-D CAD technology, the paper argues that information technologies can contribute not only to efficiency improvements but also to improved hypothesis creation capabilities in engineers and organizations through technical features such as full visualization, digital pre-assembly and simulation. This paper also discusses the factors that hinder the effective introduction of 3-D CAD technology as well as the potential management and organizational requirements for successful adaptation. Firms need to have both long-term and system-level perspectives and they need engineers who have a broader set of integrated skills that were previously scattered over multiple functions.

Technovation : Redesigning the Knowledge-Based Product Development Organization: A Case Study of Sociotechnical Systems Change , Ronald E. Purser, (November 1991), pp. 403–415

Technovation : Redesigning the Knowledge-Based Product Development Organization: A Case Study of Sociotechnical Systems Change , Ronald E. Purser, (November 1991), pp. 403–415

Redesigning the knowledge-based product development organization: a case study of sociotechnical systems change

Many R&D organizations of U. S. corporations are beginning to search for more effective ways to organize the knowledge-based product development process. Unfortunately, there are relatively few comprehensive methods for redesigning knowledge-based product development organizations. This case describes how sociotechnical systems (STS) methods were used to redesign a sophisticated chemical-based product development division of a high technology organization. STS methods provided R&D managers and professional employees a structured, analytic and highly participative approach for managing change in their division. Based on STS design principles, a change team consisting of professional employees designed and administered an organizational audit for assessing the effectiveness of current work practices and the factors which delayed research projects. Results from the audit indicated that delays to research projects were caused by organizational rather than technical factors, and that significant changes in organizational structure and work practices were required. The change team proposed the division be redesigned into a permanent team-based product development organization.