Knowledge Management With XML Integrated Within the Full Specification in Ship Design Processes
The full life cycle of as large and complex a product as a ship consists of feasibility and requirements analysis from the design and production stages, through maintenance, upgrading, decommissioning, and demolition. Many design tasks need to be informed by the perspective of what will be needed over the ship's entire lifetime. The building of a ship is a very complicated process with many concurrently running activities. Given the complexity and enormity of shipbuilding projects, effective management, knowledge application, and strategy implementation to promote the value of a shipyard are important issues. Due to rapid development in information technology and the internet, many shipyards have already applied information systems to increase profits and improve their manufacturing methods. Knowledge management will also be easily accomplished by means of information technology. New technology must enable the prototyping of complex multimodel manufacturing systems to coordinate the design efforts of the multidisciplinary teams required to design manufacturing systems. In this paper, we discuss the combination of collaborative management methods with the advantages of the internet, the building up of a virtual knowledge-sharing environment in the construction process, the use of XML standard for storing full specification data, and how to proceed with such knowledge management activities. Technology can also enable the systematic integration of new design tools to easily upgrade new design domains and methodologies. Internet technologies and collaboration management together can increase the speed of knowledge sharing, allowing workers to get the right information at the right time.