Issues in mechanical engineering design management

The Virtual Parts Engineering Research Center (VPERC), funded by the Army Research Office, focuses on building frameworks, tools, and technologies for making engineered systems sustainable and maintainable thanks to a virtual engineering environment intended to transform the engineering process, thus supporting extremely fast turnaround times for urgent part supply needs. One of its key research thrusts is data management targeted for the design process. The invitational VPERC workshop held at Arizona State University in June 2003, involved 38 participants from academia, governmental institutions and industry who discussed legacy systems engineering. This paper presents the data management needs to support mechanical engineering design as they were discussed at the meeting.