IT-Based Knowledge Management Systems to Support the Design of Product Development Processes - Information Technology and Product Development - page 56

3.5.3 Role of IT in Facilitating Knowledge
Management for DOE

As mentioned previously, Nonaka et al. (2000) highlighted the need for a shared
space to enable knowledge to be changed from tacit to explicit, a critical part of
the knowledge creation process. Information technology in the form of a KMS can
provide such a space and facilitate the conversion of explicit knowledge into tacit
knowledge (through interpretation by an individual or a group).
We now describe the case study and the IT-based KMS in greater detail.

3.6 An IT-Based Knowledge Management System
for DOE/RDM

3.6.1 Case Study Overview

The company is a small engineering company in the wire forming industry with
30 employees. They wished to move into the medical devices sector due to the
increased demand of such products. To do so, they were required to have highly
accurate product specification processes as this is a highly regulated industry.
This can be quite difficult given that wires can be as small as 25

m. In addi-
tion, there is high level of uncertainty regarding the quality of the raw material as
it composed of numerous materials, e.g., steel, platinum. For example, spring steel
can have very severe variations. The company suspected that much of the variation
was associated with incoming material. The company tended to rely on good engi-
neering practice to find the process settings that resulted in stable processes. Thus,
it was decided to adopt a DOE approach to improve existing product design and
development processes.

µ

3.6.2 Background

The accuracy and the quality of micro design/manufacturing processes, particularly
micro coiling, have become increasingly critical in today's medical device manu-
facturing industry. There is limited literature available in the micro-coiling industry
concerning process robustness and machine optimization. Control factors, such as
machine settings, contain sources of unwanted variation which can negatively affect
the repeatability and quality of a product or process. At a micro-level these varia-
tions can hugely influence how the manufacturing process performs. Therefore, it is
critical to determine which control factors can be manipulated in order to make the
product or process insensitive to noise and unwanted variation.
Hence, DOE is utilized to optimize the design and manufacturability of a medical
micro-coil used within the vascular system. DOE is applied to systematically deter-
mine noise factors that affect key product characteristics (KPCs). Results obtained