Knowledge objects enable mass-individualization

Abstract

Mass customization and product individualization are driving factors behind design automation, which in turn are enabled through the formalization and automation of engineering work. The goal is to offer customers optimized solutions to their needs timely and as profitable as possible. The path to achieve such a remarkable goal can be very winding and tricky for many companies, or even non-existing at the moment being. To succeed requires three essential parts: formally represented product knowledge, facilities to automatically apply the product knowledge, and optimization algorithms. This paper shows how these three parts can be supported in engineer-to-order businesses through the concept of knowledge objects. Knowledge Objects are human readable descriptions of formalized knowledge bundled with corresponding computer routines for the automation of that knowledge. One case example is given at the end of the paper to demonstrate the use of knowledge objects.