The ability to efficiently and quickly design and manufacture highly customized product can provide a competitive advantage for companies acting on a market with shifting customer demands. A business model based on highly customized product requires advanced application systems for automating the work of generating product variants based on different customer specification. The establishment of a system for automated design and production preparation is a significant investment in time and money and is expected to give revenues over many years. To maintain a design automation system’s usefulness over time, frequent updating of design rules and execution control will normally become a necessity. Reuse of the system encapsulated generic product family descriptions when developing a new product family is also perceived to significantly increase the efficiency in system development. The scope and the purpose of this research originate from industrial problems and needs which have been identified within research projects carried out in near collaboration with industrial partners. New concepts, perceived as prescriptive models, are in this work introduced, evaluated, and refined which is in accordance with the design modelling approach [Duffy, Andreasen, 1995]. The focus of this paper is a case study carried out at a company with long experience of systems for automated variant design. The main objective is to provide a system foundation for modelling and management of product knowledge in design automation systems to support reuse, expansion and maintenance.

Computer supported engineering design systems are used as support for designers by automating some tasks/activities of design process. From industrial aspect, implementation of a developed prototype system is a critical task. User acceptance is of high importance and strongly related to the access and understanding of the knowledge which requires a high level of system transparency. In addition, integration of the system in the environment or its compatibility with other systems/tools should be considered. Our experiences in industry show that two major issues are usually raised up during implementing a design automation system which are: documentation and organization. Documentation concerns the way of capturing, storing and distributing the information in systems, and organization concerns alignment of the system with other systems or tools as well as communication and collaboration among system participants and users. The focus of this paper is on documentation and the importance of reuse, design rationale and traceability is discussed. In order to align closely with industry practices, the thoughts are presented along with an on-going case study, where the development and analysis of roof racks for cars are being automated, and a number of challenges have been discussed. 

Implementing design automation systems to automate repetitive and time consuming design tasks enables engineer-to-order manufacturers to perform custom engineering in minimum time. To maintain a design automation system, regular updating of design information and knowledge is necessary. Consequently, there is a need of principles and methods to support capturing and structuring associated knowledge, specially, design rationale. In this paper a method for capturing, structuring, and accessing to design rationale in order to support maintenance of design automation systems is presented. The method is tested through a design automation system that develops FEA (finite element analysis) models automatically. The results are evaluated in a case company which is a supplier to the automotive industry serving many brands and car models which each more or less requires a unique solution.

Developing customized products is the business case for many manufacturing companies striving to fulfill the customers’ specific needs. When manufacturing customized products it is often necessary to also develop corresponding customized manufacturing tooling. There is a need to support concurrent development of new product variants along with their manufacturing toolsets. The communication between design engineers and manufacturing engineers is hence a key issue that if solved would enable design engineers to foresee how changes in product design affect tooling design and vice versa. To understand the correlation between the design of a product and its corresponding manufacturing tools, access to design rationale of the product and the developed tooling is required. Design rationale provides an explanation of why an artifact is designed in the way it is, including statements (textual, numerical or geometrical), argumentations, and decisions. Since design rationale is composed of information scattered all across the company's repositories in different formats (e.g. in type of a geometry, picture, table, and textual document), representing the design rationale is a challenge for many enterprises. In this paper a method is introduced that enables capture, structure and access to design rationale across product design and tooling design. The system enables representing design rationale in formats such as CAD models, spreadsheets, textual formats, and web pages. The method has been examined by developing a prototype system tested in a case company which develops and manufactures customized car accessories, such as roof racks and bike carriers, for different car models. The company develops and manufactures the products as well as the required tooling equipment. The prototype system includes different software commonly used by engineers during designing a product, for the purpose of making it applicable for other companies.

This paper addresses the issues regarding retrieve, reuse and update of design information in context of customized products and adaptive design. Capturing and representing design rationale during the development process has been identified as an important factor to support design of product variants. The study explores the development process from identifying customer requirements to production preparation in a case company which has long tradition in automating generation of design variants.  

The ability to innovate and launch customized products that are well matched to customer demands is a competitive factor for many manufacturing companies. Development of highly customized products requires following an engineer-to-order business process to tailor the products according to customers’ specifications, which brings more value to the customer and profit to the company. Using design automation systems to automate repetitive and time consuming design tasks enables the manufacturers to perform custom engineering in minimum time. To manage and maintain a product family and the corresponding automation systems, updating the design knowledge is required. Use of design rationale will normally become a necessity to allow a better understanding of the knowledge. Consequently, there is a need of principles and methods to enable capture and effectively share the design rationale. In this paper a method for capturing and sharing design rationale is presented. The results are evaluated in a case company which is a supplier of tooling for manufacturing industry.