Securing design checking service for the regulation-based product design

When designing a product, a designer has to follow regulations involved in all phases of product lifecycle. However, it may be practically impossible for a designer to be well-acquainted with all the regulations related to a product. Therefore, from the viewpoint of a company's competitiveness, it is important to provide a tool which automatically checks design results of a product in accordance with the regulations involved. Outsourcing a design checking service instead of in-house development can be an appropriate choice, considering facilities, human resources, and cost required for developing and managing design checking tools. In this paper, the authors suggest a method to prevent the leak of intellectual property, which may occur when providing design checking services. This work also discusses necessary data exchanged between a design checking service provider and a manufacturer. Furthermore, this work details design checking service procedure and system architecture of a design checking service. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.