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Facilitating design communication through engineering information traceability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2013

Neven Pavković ,
Mario Štorga ,
Nenad Bojčetić  and
Dorian Marjanović
Neven Pavković*
Affiliation:
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Zagreb, Croatia
Mario Štorga
Affiliation:
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Zagreb, Croatia
Nenad Bojčetić
Affiliation:
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Zagreb, Croatia
Dorian Marjanović
Affiliation:
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Zagreb, Croatia
*
Reprint requests to: Neven Pavković, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Ivana Lucica 5, Zagreb 10000, Croatia. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Traceability of information provides the basis for assessing the credibility of engineering information, better understanding it, and making judgments about the appropriateness of its use for a particular design task. The presented research attempts to answer how the proposed traceability methodology and framework could help designers to improve communication, eventually create new channels of communication, and contribute to the creation of shared understanding in collaborative design processes. The discussion of these issues is based on a literature review, empirical research, observations of industrial practice, and feedback from initial implementation. The research is focused on information objects (IOs), archetypically represented in the engineering domain as technical documents that are often complex structures constituted of textual, numerical, and graphical fragments. The presented approach is based on an abstraction of IOs' relationships organized around specific contexts that are defined by a subset of product development ontology. Each IO could be repeatedly represented in various contexts that may contain different subsets of objects and their relationships. Such a representation also acts as a container in which the ontology concept instances are associated with IOs being developed and traced during the design episode. The usage of the proposed traceability methodology is discussed with examples of implementation and possible utilization situations. The paper is focused on explaining how the developed functionalities could help to resolve manifestations of inadequate information flow, which cause communication barriers in engineering companies. In addition, the proposed traceability methodology offers the possibility to record the detailed history of actions and events associated with IOs in the usage process of the product life cycle management systems. Based on the research findings, this paper argues that such a network of the traceability links and relationships may be viewed as a novel design communication channel.

Keywords

Collaborative DesignDesign CommunicationEngineering InformationProduct Development OntologyShared UnderstandingTraceabilityTraceability of Engineering Information Project
Type
Special Issue Articles
Information
AI EDAM , Volume 27 , Issue 2: Studying and Supporting Design Communication , May 2013 , pp. 105 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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