The role of the knowledge management in product lifecycle

The paper presents a discussion of some problems related to knowledge management in product lifecycle thought treating some applications developed in different aspects of lifecycle: conceptual design, detailed design, production, selling, maintenance, diagnostic and dismissing. In these applications, we show how Knowledge management is involved in all these phases: IT proposes several methodologies and tools to represent and manage knowledge to aid expert who operates in the domains related to product lifecycle. Methodologies such as Triz can be used to assist conceptual design, while KBE systems permit to automate design procedure of numerous products. Neural networks and fuzzy logic help to select right approaches to production. The paper ends presenting some applications performed by the authors, focusing aspects related to design