BULETINUL INSTITUTULUI POLITEHNIC DIN IAŞI - Universitatea ...

Customer
(online configurator)
Sales
(configurator, ERP,...)
custom
request
Design
(CAD, FEM, ERP, PDM, MBS,...)
Part Design (e.g. Hydraulic)
(CAD, FEM, calculation, PDM,...)
Purchasing
(ERP,...)
Production
(CAM, NX-Daten,...)
record
request
Legend:
Bul. Inst. Polit. Iaşi, t. LVI (LX), f. 2, 2010 229
request
response
analyze
characteristic
request
curves
request response
design
part
consultation
request response
Department
(used software)
clarification
timeline
preliminary offering
schedule
delivery
date
document action
Fig. 1 – Sequence diagram of the standard processes
for the generation of a customized offer.
offering
order
placed
decide
Currently the customer describes to the sales department the requirements
for the desired product. The sales department interprets the customer
requirements and communicates them further to the design department. There is
normally no sufficient common platform for communication and therefore
unnecessary iteration cycles are done. This can be improved through direct
interfaces between the customer and the two departments, by using a common
configuration tool, which generates department specific product information
and documentation. This solution will be discussed further in the next section.
Another common problem that occurs in the processes described in Fig. 1 is
that generally the project information and awareness remain only in a small
group of specialists. They are not reused for later following projects and are
unavailable for new employees. The company specific knowledge base would
help in solving this problem, by documenting existent intellectual property of
the employees into the pre-structured product specific knowledge.
A good example of a holistic knowledge framework to design and
implement a knowledge based organization is presented by B i n n e r in [4]. This
paper concentrates on the early design phases and can be seen as a methodology
for the previous steps taken in knowledge frameworks systems.
It is therefore not necessary to consider the entire company’s knowledge
base, but rather only the product specific knowledge used in early design phases
to generate a correct first offer. Such comprehensive and integrated knowledge
management solutions are currently almost absent in practice.