Managing design knowledge in the corporate environment
We describe a new platform for managing historical calculations, so
that the investment in design effort is protected, and that knowledge and
methods are retained and easily accessed, even if the people who
developed them have moved on
Most design engineers have come across Mathcad*. The software has been
around for almost 20 years, and according to the developers, there are
now over 1.5 million Mathcad users around the world. Put simply, Mathcad
is an engineering word processor that performs calculations. Many
engineers use spreadsheets to handle the computational aspects of their
designs and to plot the data; but it's not easy to check, validate and
retrieve information hidden away in cells. What Mathcad users prefer is
the document-centred approach this software gives them: an open worksheet
where they enter equations and formulae in familiar maths notation and
place them, with graphs, diagrams, explanatory text, tables and
annotations, freely on the page.
It follows that a design project worked through in Mathcad is
self-documenting, because everything is included in the one place. And
that means it's well placed to resolve a problem fundamental to most
engineering-based enterprises: how to retain and re-use their investment
in design knowledge and expertise.
Engineers move on, like everybody else. They get promoted, transferred to
new projects, change jobs. The calculations and sketches they've jotted
down on backs of envelopes, or worked out on desktop calculators, aren't
permanently recorded. The custom programs they've written are not easily
identified, or related to the finished project, even if they've been
saved.
So, when a design project is re-visited a few months, or years, later,
it's not easy to recover the underlying assumptions, the ideas and
calculations on which it's based. Re-validating or revising the design,
re-doing the calculations on the basis of new parameters, or re-using the
work in a new design project very often necessitates re-inventing the
wheel.
A Cambridge University Engineering Design Centre study of aerospace
design teams found that 90% of the information they use comes from work
done previously. The trouble is, 75% of that information comes from
memory, and typically 20% of any given day will be taken up retrieving or
giving out information. That's inefficient, error-prone and wasteful of
key resources.
This is the problem that new Mathcad Enterprise sets out to counter. All
multi-user Mathcad licences of 5 seats or more are now supplied in the
Enterprise version, which allows the final, audited, quality-assured
documentation of every design project to be stored in a Microsoft
SharePoint repository. This provides a mechanism for knowledge capture
and retention.
Because every stage of the design - the original concepts, underlying
assumptions, worked calculations, illustrative graphs, explanatory text,
notes, sketches and results - are retained in the Mathcad document, you
can follow the design process, re-use methods, change variables to test
new design parameters, rectify mistakes and identify areas where the
design can be improved.
The investment your company makes in design is thus protected. Knowledge
and methods are retained and easily accessed, even if the people who
developed them have moved on. When you consider how much every hour of
engineering time costs your company, a solution that enables design
knowledge to be quickly retrieved, errors easily identified and proven
methods consistently re-used makes a great deal of sense.
Mathcad software is distributed and serviced in the UK by Adept
Scientific