Management of Cost Knowledge in Product Design – Integration of Upstream and Downstream Life Cycle Phases

Abstract

To design products that meet the customer and market requirements as well as given cost limits, knowledge from the whole life cycle is essential. On the one hand, important parts of this knowledge are generated before and after design decisions. On the other hand, knowledge has to be distributed among various internal and external knowledge carriers. Thus, there is a need of methods supporting the integration of cost (related) knowledge from upstream and downstream phases in design processes. The paper presents such methods as part of a holistic cost knowledge management approach for product design.