Synergy Effects of Knowledge Sharing in Collaborative Product Design

Individual designers have a limited range of knowledge but the scope of such knowledge can be enlarged by sharing information, either among separate groups of designers or among individual designers within one group. First, the possibilities for generating new design solutions which cannot be obtained by an isolated designer, or by the simple addition of knowledge from other independent designers, are discussed with reference to knowledge sharing in collaborative projects. Possibilities for creating new knowledge come into existence when designers in different fields share what they know. Collaborative work among different groups or enterprises, however, is feasible only when each partner can mutually benefit from sharing their knowledge. Second, a numerical measure for determining the viability of such collaborative work is proposed and practical procedures for determining the viability of collaborative work with designers are constructed. In the proposed decision making method, synergy effects can be quantitatively evaluated by viewing changes in the Pareto optimum solution sets before and after knowledge sharing. Finally, applied examples of a project to design industrial robots are given, illustrating these synergy effects.