Utilising enterprise knowledge with knowledge-based engineering

The need for enterprises to remain competitive within a growing international market place has seen the use of knowledge-based product development techniques being employed. Techniques such as Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) allow for the capture, storage and reuse of the enterprises' intellectual property and for reduction in the time to create products by the capture of company product and process knowledge and, more importantly, the use of that knowledge in automated or semi-automated KBE applications. This paper will introduce KBE, review from the literature the four dedicated KBE application development techniques employed, and make suggestions for further development to model a company's best practices and the automation of those best practices allowing for the freeing up of a company's human resource to have the time to consider a greater number of alternatives and search for more innovative solutions