Knowledge enabled engineering applied to car body design

Sammanfattning: To stay competitive in a global market companies push to make their product development process more efficient with respect to added customer value, shorter time to market, efficient knowledge and technology transfer. To achieve this they depend on the choice of work procedures, suitable processes, methods, available knowledge and experiences, CAE tools and appropriate competence to manage the mentioned for concept creation and concept realization.This licentiate thesis presents a new method how to capture, store and reuse information and knowledge. It also includes discussions about which new technologies that are needed for Functional Product Development and a demonstrator that shows how downstream knowledge can be captured and realized in a computer application ready to use for designers in the early phases of the product development process. Focus for the method and demonstrator lies in the conceptual phase, since designers have most or best opportunities to change the design in this early phase. A change of the design later in the project will become more expensive and difficult and it might even be impossible to compensate or correct the shortcomings of a poor design concept.The new method and demonstrator are results of case studies made at Volvo Cars Corporation in Gothenburg, discussions and work shops together with the ProViking partner companies Volvo Cars Corporation, Volvo Aero, Sandvik Coromant and Hägglunds Drives.