Key themes in design information management

A product development process of some sort can be found in virtually every engineering design organisation. Delivering this process are a number of different organisational functions and stakeholders, including engineers, knowledge and information managers, all of whom provide inputs to – or support for – the process of design itself. This process is usually also supported by an Information Management (IM) system such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) or Product Data Management (PDM). In practice, such systems often comprise a collection of information, document management systems and associated procedures. However, IM systems have commonly been developed for one particular purpose, or to support the needs of a particular stakeholder. Whilst more recent efforts have been directed toward supporting the whole design process from the perspective of multiple stakeholders through, for example, customisable user interfaces, the more fundamental issue of what requirements these various stakeholders have is not well understood. Drawing principally on work conducted in the Innovative Design and Manufacturing Research Centre (IdMRC) at the University of Bath, this paper aims to explore the viewpoints of these stakeholders. The viewpoints are then synthesised to identify five key themes, that together form a set of requirements for an IM system that can support the product development process in an integrated manner. Potentially conflicting aspects of the five themes are highlighted and areas for further work identified.