History knowledge management in lifecycle of product development and its implementation

A review for product development and knowledge management including product development process, process history, design intent and domain knowledge is presented. Modeling the product development process is the first step of the history knowledge management in the product development process. The integrated framework of the history knowledge management (HKM) is set up and the hierarchical model of history knowledge is built based on process. Methods for the acquisition and management of history knowledge are presented including process history, design intent and domain knowledge. A method of integrated knowledge representation (KR), generalized rule (GR), is described for history knowledge. The functional modules of knowledge-based PDPM system are described and HKM is its important part. The architecture of HKM system based on PDPM is clarified. The prototyping software for HKM is developed and used successfully during the lifecycle of a new type of railway rolling stock development in a Chinese enterprise, QQHR Railway Rolling Stock Company.