Initial steps of developing a process integrative structuring of documents containing product information

In today's very complex product development processes, a major problem is to provide engineers with the right information at the right time. Engineers need to search for existing product information and have to evaluate its relevance. This research aims at the support of information retrieval by defining a process oriented, parameter based structuring approach of product related documents. The concept of this approach is described as dynamic linking of documents to the process. Documents are analysed and process oriented parameters are derived. An outlook is given on the definition of the value scale of the parameters, the mapping of these parameters to the product development process and the expansion of the analysed data base.