# Industrial Design of Electric Machines Supported with Knowledge-Based Engineering Systems
## 2 Standardization of Processes in the Electric Machine Domain, an Overview  
Figure 1 summarizes the personnel, documentation, tools, and processes involved in the electric machine development process. Describing Figure 1, it is a fact that typically a design of an electric machine is defined by four types of documentation. 1. **Requirements document:** This document contains all the requirements for a particular electric machine and allows an understanding of what a product should do. 2. **Design document:** This is a technical document where the product definition of the electric machine is justified based on calculations of the different physical phenomena, applying sizing rules, using previous technical solutions for a similar design, using a solution that is standardized in benchmarking, etc. A good design document is essential to identify the reasons for a non-adequate performance during the testing phase or to improve the design in a future continuous improvement program. 3. **Product definition documentation:** This is a list of documents and drawings allowing to define the electrical/mechanical ratings (voltage, current, speed, input/output power levels, etc.) and to manufacture and mount all the pieces of the electric machines. Typically, it includes a bill of materials (BOMs), mechanical drawings, electric diagrams of windings, electrical schemas, and extra technical documentation. 4. **Testing report:** This is a technical document that presents the results of tests evaluating the grade of achievements of the performance requirements defined previously in the requirements document. A non-compliant result will derive from a revision of the manufacturing process or a revision of the design, needing to return to the design process. Finally, after some design iterations, if the design cannot fulfill the requirements, a new requirement agreement will be negotiated with the client. Paper documents were the only means of presenting traditional designs. However, with the introduction of personal computers in the companies, the electronic documents were standardized, allowing them to write and draw them down, store all the information, and reuse all documents for new designs. Furthermore, advanced tools appeared to support the designer in managing and solving problems associated with the different design tasks. Among these tools, we have advanced tools to define, verify, and track requirements, tools to create three-dimensional (3D) definitions of the product model, design tools for high fidelity computation, and data analysis tools to compare different virtual designs. In a product development environment, it is imperative to have powerful design tools, but it is also essential to have standardized processes to carry out the sequences of complete design tasks. This is much like the description of process standardization coming from [PERSON] (1975) regarding the Toyota Product Development System claim that their highly standardized processes for product development allow creating highly stable and predictable outcomes (with both quality and timing) in an unpredictable environment. This necessity of standardized processes is directly applicable to the electric machine development environment. The design tasks for electric machines are complex related to a parallel multiphysics design (electromagnetic, thermal, mechanical, etc.) where several engineers could work simultaneously on parallel processes and whose results must be integrated. A time delay in a task-result can stop the workload of other tasks. Even worse, a computation error in one design domain (e.g., electromagnetic design) can imply severe consequences in a re-design of the other domains (e.g., thermal, mechanical). Therefore, standardized processes are needed to assure high-quality standards in each outcome and manage the iterations among the different sub-processes without uncertainties. Some electric machine companies may already be at the point of having all the features implemented in their product development process.