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Content archived on 2024-05-24

Experts Enablers in the Machinery Engineering Domain

Objective

The main asset of European machinery builders and engineering companies is the knowledge existing in the companies, and more precisely, the design knowledge. However, there are several problems related to the capture of this design knowledge, its management and its loss. XPERTS aims at providing manufacturing and engineering companies with the means to manage the knowledge of experts effectively, considering the entire cycle of expertise acquisition by young engineers, the use of design knowledge in daily design activities and the avoidance of the loss of knowledge when experts leave an organisation.

XPERTS will address three key research areas: the human interaction between experts and knowledge bases, knowledge formation from existing databases, and the use of knowledge as a component that makes it shareable.

Objectives:
XPERTS seeks to solve problems of machinery and engineering companies in the knowledge management domain by:

Shortening the learning process for new employees;

Providing a means by which to store the collective knowledge and lessons learnt about previous experiences;

Providing a means by which to manage engineering knowledge and expertise;

Determining agreed company standards and procedures for design.

The main project target for industrial users is to reduce the time needed to adapt employees to their workplaces in the engineering field by a factor of 50%. An additional benefit will be the reuse of collective previous experience. A consequence will be the improvement of product quality by applying consistent standards and best practices in product design.

The technical objective is to create a set of methods, guides and tools to represent, capture and accumulate the organisations/ engineering knowledge. Engineering rules, databases, standards, catalogues and other sources will be considered. Real work situations which solve mechanical problems in the machinery sector will be evaluated and will be shown as best practices.

Work description:
XPERTS is divided into four technical workpackages (WP) as described below.
WP1. Engineering knowledge formalization:
To provide industrial users with a formalised methodology to analyse and model their products, design processes and associated knowledge;
To capture the knowledge used in design.
This task will allow definition of the operational specification of the engineering knowledge application;
Operational specification of the knowledge-based (KB) system.

WP2. KBE software tool adaptation:
The software development will be based on existing KB software tools to be adapted to the specific requirements of the engineering domain. Tools to be obtained include:
.A knowledge acquisition system: the software package should be maintainable by non-programmers.
.A knowledge broker: the engine that executes the knowledge rules and serve the knowledge browser.
.A knowledge generator for the browser: this end user interface to the knowledge can be accessed from any location on demand.

WP3. Show cases implementation:
Customisation of knowledge for specific engineering problems. This task will be based on the knowledge acquired in WP1. It will be necessary to feed it into the system and make the final adaptation of the KBE to the specific needs of users.
End user testing. Benchmarking tests will be defined to verify the goodness of the results in different aspects including knowledge maintenance, level of support in design activities and others.

WP4. Change management:
This workpackage will develop guides to implement new ways of design practices. The introduction of new tools and methods in the design process leads not only to changes in the technical system but also in the social schemas.
The work will focus on:
.Identifying barriers;
.Designing measures to overcome problems;
.Creating guides to implement a new way of work.

Call for proposal

Data not available

Coordinator

FATRONIK SYSTEM S.A.
EU contribution
No data
Address
POLIGONO INDUSTRIAL IBAITARTE 1
20870 ELGOIBAR
Spain

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Total cost
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Participants (9)