An ontology-based approach to knowledge management in design processes

Engineering design processes comprise highly creative and knowledge-intensive tasks that involve extensive information exchange and communication among distributed teams. In such dynamic settings, traditional information management systems fail to provide adequate support due to their inflexible data structures and hard-wired usage procedures, as well as their restricted ability to integrate process and product information. In this paper, we advocate the idea of Process Data Warehousing as a means to provide a knowledge management and integration platform for such design processes. The key idea behind our approach is a flexible ontology-based schema with formally defined semantics that enables the capture and reuse of design experience, supported by advanced computer science methods.