LEARNING FROM DESIGN HISTORIES IN CONCURRENT ENGINEERING

Solutions based purely on learning technologies are viewed as insuffic ient to meet the various challenges facing European manufacturing. Int egration within organisational and social context is required, and one strategic position, anthropocentrism, is outlined. We describe our re search concerning support for the early design phase in distributed en gineering settings, in particular the Extended Design History Editor. Designs can be retrieved and modified from a database of detailed desi gn decisions and notes made using an on-line design journal (ODJ) - th e electronic analogue of a designer's daybook. This enables design dec isions and rationale to be recorded and examined for learning, audit, and reuse. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.