Kbe - knowledge based engineering

Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Knowledge-Based Engineering
A BEST PRACTICE GUIDE

A BEST PRACTICE GUIDE

Achieving Competitive Advantage through Knowledge-Based Engineering
Stephen Cooper, Ip-Shing Fan and Guihua Li Cranfield University

Foreword by Jeff Jupp MA, FRAeS, FREng
The Industrial Revolution created a critical mass of factory-produced goods, a critical mass of possibility. Its impetus sustains our industries today but increasing product complexity threatens progress. Once, small groups could hold the knowledge for a car or ‘plane in their heads. They understood the how, what and why of each system and resolved problems daily. This is no longer possible. Today, if the specialists in one area of a design make a change, unresolved impacts elsewhere may easily increase delay and cost. Current methods of resolution must improve. ‘What ifs’ need to be answered as they are asked. Expensive and time-wasting feasibility testing destroys creativity, the lifeblood of progress. Small groups cannot hold the knowledge required and large groups cannot control it. The ‘Intellectual Capital’ of an enterprise must be trapped and deployed within a technology that understands the ‘DNA of a design’. It has to behave intuitively, delivering knowledge not ‘on demand’ but ‘as required’, analysing the impacts of changes as they are made and allowing trade-offs to be made from a position of knowledge optimisation not compromise. And it must be expandable to manage the process across an enterprise. Tomorrow’s engineers need to be free to innovate and to realise and assess their ideas ‘virtually’. There can be no brake on creativity, no let up in the quest for better products faster, and with lower cost.
Jeff Jupp is Director Technical responsible for Engineering Process Development and IT at British Aerospace Airbus.

One of the answers to these ambitious needs exists. In Airbus we have used it on real projects and know its impact. Read on, as the astonishing