Representation and Exchange of "Knowledge Cards": A Pen Design Case Study

Organizations consider more and more the collaborative aspects to exchange information and knowledge, in complete and correct way, among different systems. These organizations involve many specialists from different domains, with wide-ranging knowledge. Consequently, knowledge is now regarded as a strategic asset which must be managed, with an increasing need for representation formalisms and deployment of tools for knowledge exchange. This paper introduces a contribution to this area giving greater place to the user’s point of view. The knowledge is shared with “knowledge cards” based on standards and simple formalisms to ensure the user’s adoption and the portability of knowledge exchange. UML formalism as well as XML technology have been chosen for their skills to meet the needs of interoperability and their capacity to be treated by users and computers. An application on design knowledge of a pen, resulting from a CYGMA “knowledge book”, was carried out in order to illustrate and to validate our choices.