A design representation scheme for collaborative product development

Design is an integral component of product development, which includes manufacturing. In order to avoid costly reworks and delays, and to reduce the lead-time in product development, effective communication of design concepts among the various stakeholders such as customers, designers and engineers is of utmost importance. In this respect, functional representations provide a methodology, which can be used to describe a design or product effectively. However, function is not the only type of information that needs to be communicated among the various stakeholders during a design process. Other types of information such as design specifications and constraints, which are non-functional, also need to be taken into account. This non-functional information cannot be adequately expressed using existing functional representations. Accordingly, in this work, a novel purpose-behaviour-structure (PBS) representation scheme to capture vital design knowledge for collaborative product development is proposed. The proposed PBS representation scheme can be used by designers working in a collaborative environment for product development. A case study on the design of a vacuum cleaner is used to illustrate the functionality of the PBS representation scheme. The details of the representation scheme are presented in this paper.