Research Objectives

This was a collaborative project spanning four disciplines: engineering, maths, computing and organizational psychology. The aim of the project was to create sharable software prototypes that enabled the re-use and repurposing of engineering information through embedding. It involved working with industrial and other end user partners to define case studies and use them to support demonstrations of how embedding might be implemented and used to enhance real-world engineering design, manufacturing and through life support processes. The following objectives were pursued.

1. To specify three case study scenarios in collaboration with the industrial partners and other end users.
2. To review approaches that could be used to embed design structures in product information from these case studies and implement atleast two in software prototypes.
3. To create technology demonstrators build on these prototypes which can be used to illustrate the potential value and impact of being able to embed design structures in product information.
4. To evaluate the technology demonstrators with end users and use learning to inform requirements and usage scenarios for the embedding of design structures in product information.
5. To identify future opportunities for engineering users and within wider academic communities including potential future solution providers such as maths & computing and potential users of embedding such as those who wish to relate data across scales.