Exploring the Advantages of Content Management Systems for Managing Engineering Knowledge in Product-service Systems

Knowledge management has drawn great interest in manufacturing industries and related business practices. With the requirement for better managing the massive data and knowledge generated during different lifecycle stages of products, manufacturing industries are looking for effective way to acquire, store, process and share knowledge from and between different stakeholders, so as to make appropriate decisions and continuously improve business operations. Current (conventional) engineering information systems in manufacturing applications, such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Computerized Maintenance Management and Product Lifecycle Management Systems are difficult to inter-operate and integrate with each other when dealing with growing amount of data and knowledge as a product goes through its lifecycle stages. As informational and communication technologies (ICT) are being developed much faster in other sectors such as financial, business and social media, it is important to explore the potential of latest ICT tools predominantly used in those sectors for engineering applications and identify any advantages and benefits over the conventional engineering information systems. This paper presents an experiment in using an Open Source Content Management System, for the implementation of a collaborative product-service system for the planning and execution of maintenance and service operations of high-value complex numerical control machine tools in advanced manufacturing systems.