Abstract

In addition to information quality, every step of the information lifecycle need to be accounted for with reasons so that human can trace back the whole information lifecycle and review it if needed. Since the information generated and reused by knowledge management process will be highly summarized, credibility of information will not be established without such tracing facility (IBM 1997)”. Related to this, one of the challenges associate with the shift in contemporary product development paradigm is that the provision of effective through-life product support requires that engineering design information (EDI) has to remain traceable (accessible, understandable and reusable), throughout the decades that a product remains in service. The biggest obstacle to traceability achievement is current practice of insufficient EDI context capturing and documentation, together with an inadequate support to the tracing of reasons behind the EDI development. Therefore, the research objective of this project is to establish a framework for traceability of EDI development within the new and evolving paradigm of the long and total product-service life cycle. The two aims has been set for the research: (1) to develop tools, methods, and associated theoretical foundations for understanding and supporting the traceability of EDI development; and (2) to investigate the dynamics of the EDI development throughout the product life cycle in order to provide environment in which the traceability tools and methods can be made operational and effective.