Knowledge base for supporting the handling of product models in engineering design

Product models are the medium of capturing and transporting information about the product in engineering design. The correct handling of product models is important for efficient and effective product development processes. Currently, existing best practices or support measures for handling product models are often not available for the product developer. This leads to an inadequate use of product models and consequently to inefficient and ineffective product development processes. In this paper, we propose a knowledge base that supports the application of best practices and existing support measures to support the handling of product models. Requirements for developing the knowledge model are identified in industry study in form of model-related situations and tasks that need to be supported. The knowledge base is described in the paper and initially evaluated by implementing a support tool for the task of developing a product model. The insights from this work can not only be used in supporting the handling of product models in engineering design, but in principle in all fields of applications where models are used in order to enable a more efficient way of handling information.