Introduction

Current digital manufacturing ICT platforms have provided a series of useful tools, including CAx, PDM and PLM systems, to support engineers in a series of activities. However:

• Today's ERP systems are often detached from the engineering knowledge, while PLM systems provide no link to actual performance indicators, such as cost, time, and quality parameters;
• Engineering knowledge is often dispersed over many stakeholders and IT systems;
• Current User Interfaces (UI) are often too complex and require much effort to follow;
• A large part of the revisions and the process iterations during the product and process development could be avoided with the use of new IT tools taking advantage of existing knowledge and experience.

Objectives

Know4Car IP, a four-years EU-funded research project that started on September 1st, 2011, will address the above challenges, by developing an agent-based collaborative platform for managing manufacturing process knowledge.

The Know4Car consortium will address the following objectives, utilizing a modern technical approach:

• More efficient knowledge management and collaboration, throughout the process lifecycle, supporting the capture and systematic organization of knowledge across different stakeholders:

-    Systematic analysis of shop floor data for process and product design specifications;
-    Automatic extraction and representation of knowledge from history of design changes.

• Revolutionize the UI context in the engineering office and the shop floor, addressing the needs of blue-collar workers and engineers with particular emphasis on training activities:

-    Faster, easier, error-free UI for data entry / checking in the shop floor along with intuitive UI for instantaneous knowledge retrieval from workers and engineers;
-    Serious games options for training and design purposes.