A Study of Knowledge Succession in Engineering Process Management

Our objective is to retain competitiveness in the context of the retirement of the baby boomers who spurred the technological aptitude of Japanese industry. Toshiba Corporation has developed DFACE for Knowledge Management (DFACE-KM), which extends design for six sigma (DFSS) as a process design tool of knowledge management. We have applied DFACE-KM to process innovation of design development and begun a project designed to transfer experts´ knowledge in practice to the next generation, focusing on the original technical standards. A feature of this project is construction of a framework allowing young engineers to internalize knowledge in practice by embedding it in a CAD platform and handing on in a community of practice. It is important to select knowledge to be embedded in the CAD platform in accordance with logicality, invariance and versatility. Therefore, we have endeavored to research the knowledge-based behavior of engineers from the perspectives of work breakdown structure (WBS) and engineering standard architecture for product lifecycle management (PLM). In this paper, we propose our paradigm for the design of the knowledge succession process and report on the proceedings and results of a project in a mechatronics engineering department of Toshiba Corporation.