The need for product knowledge reuse and sharing within knowledge-based engineering systems

The deployment of knowledge-based engineering systems is on the increase within engineering industries and, as such, there will be an ever-increasing demand to share a common product representation, which includes design and manufacturing knowledge. Currently, each commercial knowledge-based engineering system has its own development language and therefore representation of design and manufacturing knowledge. To date, no initiative has fully addressed the need to exchange product knowledge as well as product data. It is therefore, the main aim of this paper to demonstrate the need for product knowledge reuse and sharing. Proposals for the development of a product knowledge representation language will also be discussed.