Information driven product development: A framework for product design and analysis integration

New paradigms and accompanying software systems are necessary to support the integration of system level design and discipline level analysis activities for the implementation of product lifecycle management. In this paper, we present an information driven product development method for the integration in the context of multidisciplinary product realization. The method contains three constituents: product information model which represents the associativities among design requirements, product components, and design parameters; compromise Decision Support Problem which maps the information model directly into design problems; and knowledge based Finite Element Analysis which generates analysis model automatically from the information model. Information driven product development uses product information model as a communication media between design and analysis activities, hence provides an effective way to trace the impact of design changes, facilitates the reuse of analyses models, and supports collaborative decision-making. An electronic chip package design and analysis scenario is presented to illustrate and demonstrate this method.