Set-Based Thinking™ software solutions

We don't really try to sell our software up front; until you've started adopting Set-Based Thinking™ practices, our tools may seem a little out of place. It would be a little like handing a tray of surgical tools to someone who's just trying to carve the turkey for dinner... the value of the tools won't be too compelling.

So, we actually recommend that you largely ignore our software until you've sent a team or two through the Set-Based Thinking™ training, at which point you'll have learned what you need from some tools and will be able to evaluate our software offering. However, we do want to let you know up front that there is availability of high-quality, professional-level tools to support what you'll be learning in the training... you won't be left with a daunting IT task to support your engineers' new-found skills.

Our software is designed from the core to support the LAMDA learning cycle and A3-thinking via a set of interconnected Knowledge Briefs (K-Briefs). A key issue that must be addressed in any knowledge capture system is indexing and reuse. If the captured knowledge is not easily accessed, then it won't be regularly reused; and if it is not regularly reused, then it will not be regularly updated; if not regularly updated, then a significant percentage of the "knowledge" will become obsolete, which then makes searching through that pile of knowledge even more difficult, such that it is accessed even less, and thus updated even less. This is the typical vicious cycle that results in the failure of most knowledge systems.

And we will argue its not good enough to just make it easy to search. Even the best search engines typically return a lot of stuff you don't want, require significant effort to find what you need when you need it. Often engineers will feel it easier to "reinvent" than to search through the archives of past knowledge. Hence, we believe the key to a knowledge system is to properly design the larger system and processes such that engineers don't need to search for the lessons-learned, the knowledge should be "in their face" whenever they should be using it.

To effectively capture the knowledge of engineers, you need a tool that is easy for the engineers to use and allows the engineers to fully express themselves to their colleagues; which means, at the very least, the ability to nicely format text, to organize information into tables, to embed spreadsheets and graphics, to drop in 3D engineering diagrams, and so on. Given there already exists such a tool that the engineers already know how to use, we have simply partnered with Microsoft to embed Microsoft Word within our application. We leverage Office System's new XML capabilities to allow us to tightly integrate free-form Word documents with the high-structured data in our Set-Based Thinking database that allow us to organize and map out your knowledge such that we can put the right information "in your face" when you need it.

Although we certainly support traditional text searches, we hope its almost never used. We provide multiple ways to navigate your knowledge that should provide engineers much deeper insight and understanding, in addition to more quickly getting them to the information that they need. We have graphical maps, tabular matrices, category outlines, structured checklists, and many other views of your knowlege. Beyond that, our software supports numerous analyses of data and information designed to give engineers greater insight and help them generate new knowledge upon which their design work can be based.

That should give you a rough picture of what we have to offer. Once you've gotten into our training process, we'll be able to discuss the software features much more deeply.