Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) is the overall integration of knowledge, rules and process operation in the engineering process. It helps implanting the interdisciplinary know-how in product- and process development. The resulting effects are mainly time- and cost-cutting, which can be assigned as relevant competitive advantages against competitors. The importance of this field of study for industries like the automotive, ship-building, process engineering, plant manufacturing and machine-building industry was the significant reason for starting this research. At the very beginning, the focus was on the identification of certain descriptors through analyzing almost 100 scientific articles, books and dissertations about KBE. On the one hand this approach gives a deeper look into the state of the art and on the other hand it provides the possibility of ordering these articles in a certain hierarchy of relevance. The frequencies of indications of the given descriptors within the ...
