Knowledge management and XML–based application for manufacturing integration in design

During the last ten years, concurrent engineering has been largely studied and this new industrial organisation has been commonly adopted. Design phases are therefore more and more gathered and realised simultaneously during product design process. Product life cycle knowledge has to be integrated as soon as possible during its development. This paper aims at presenting our approach to manage and integrate manufacturing knowledge in design. Some first specifications are presented for the database structure using XML (Extended Mark-up Language). Then, those managed manufacturing knowledge are used in several contexts as teaching and research applications. Recent results and future investigations are finally presented.