新產品研發（New Product Development）涉及了各類知識包括過往知識工作者的經驗與複雜技術文件與正式文件。這些知識儲存在文件知識系統、產品資料管理系統、產品生命週期管理系統與網頁搜尋等資訊系統。然而不同開發階段的新手面對分歧知識與系統，在新產品研發流程之中，面對各類的資訊標的，即使資料庫中擁有成功的產品開發經驗卻無法精確的找到所需要的資訊。本研究議題即是在異質系統下透過合適的知識結構取得正確的資訊。本研究提出一個系統架構及其相對應的知識架構，讓使用者在新產品研發過程中可以比較容易地整合相關的資訊系統並允許知識重用。本研究分析如何將此系統架構模組化，以利在產品生命週期管理系統、產品管理系統與知識管理系統等異質資訊系統中可以有效地整合與重用複雜的知識。本研究提出的系統架構同時包含了物件導向式(Object-oriented)的知識模型，以包容新產品研發流程中的工作、階段、分類、角色以及元件等知識，並掌握新產品研發流程中的相關知識。同時為了記錄個別經驗，該知識模型也使用了案例結構(Case-based Approach)的概念，此案例結構不僅記錄了每個案例的基本資訊，也記錄了專家推薦的資料。透過這樣的架構可以提供案例式推理（Case-based Reasoning）與使用知識階層的概念字詞查詢問答（Query Answering via Conceptual Terms）等方法提供新手使用者查詢到以往知識工作者的知識。本系統架構也包含了查詢執行模組以整合來自不同系統查詢結果的統一呈現。The new product development (NPD) involves multidisciplinary knowledge such as the accumulated experiences of knowledge-workers, and the sophisticated technical and legal documents. The information systems facilitating the NPD processes often include docu-ment-based Knowledge Management System (KMS), Product Data Management (PDM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems, and web searching. With these diverse dis-ciplines and systems, novice users at various stages of NPD processes often have problems to repeat the success story of past products from the conceptual inception all the way to produc-tion and maintenance. How to capture the successful application of information across these diverse disciplines and systems into suitable knowledge structures for later intelligent reuse is the problem studied in this study. The study proposes a system architecture and the required knowledge structure to inte-grate and coordinate NPD-related information systems in order to allow better knowledge re-use throughout the complete lifecycle of NPD. The study analyzes the required modules in the architecture to illustrate the knowledge reuse can be done in a systematical manner regardless of the differences in specific PLM, PDM, and KMS systems. The study proposes an object-oriented knowledge model with tasks, stages, classifica-tions, roles, and components as the building blocks to describe the knowledge in NPD proc-esses for reuse. To record the knowledge-workers’ experiences, a case-based approach is used to store the information of experiences and the recommendation of experts. To retrieve the best-fit cases, the study integrates the case-based reasoning for answering queries with con-ceptual terms via specific knowledge hierarchy for tasks, stages, classifications, roles, and/or components of product development.
