Infrastructure for implementing a responsive product development system: a case-based reasoning approach

Responding to unpredictable customer demands and changing design are common in the early stage of new product development, which requires good coordination and collaboration from almost all the functional disciplines of the company. Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), which combines the knowledge-based support philosophy with a simulation of human reasoning when past experience is used to create the design for customer requirement, is used as the underlying approach to establish the knowledge-base. This paper attempts to propose the infrastructure for building a responsive product development system, which is able to inspire designers to develop innovative designs. A Hybrid Information Management Module (HIMM) is responsible for case base transfer and relational database to enable efficient retrieval of the right information to the right person at right time. The significant contribution of this research concerns the introduction of a product development system, which enables the progressive inclusion of machine intelligence features and elements into the entire operation, thereby enhancing the implementation of a responsive product development environment.