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The global manufacturing industry is entering an era of considerable growth and innovation due to radical developments in advanced technologies. Knowledge remains crucial in improving product design, decision making, productivity, and increasing the speed of innovation. Communication is at the heart of knowledge exchange between stakeholders, especially those with different technical and social backgrounds. However, significant barriers exist when sharing product design knowledge due to the lack of available formalized tools and methods. In this article, to facilitate knowledge exchange and collaboration among stakeholders during product design, a method to systematically improve the understanding of target objects, including the composition of the object, nature of the object, and tools to support its related communication, is proposed. Further, a knowledge representation framework is described which enables parties to clearly understand the characteristics of the object and greatly improve communication efficiency. A case study is presented to validate how the proposed framework provides valuable insights into the improvement of design communication and contributes to global manufacturing development.
Zhang et al. (Mon,) studied this question.