Design support apparatus and design support method

A design support method comprising:

• acquiring, by an input unit of a design support apparatus, design information related to a target product;
• extracting, by an extraction unit of the design support apparatus, based on a classification axis that is a rule for classifying a phrase or a numerical value related to a component, a function, or a requirement specification in the target product and that is stored in a classification axis storage unit configured to store the classification axis, the phrase or the numerical value related to the component, the function, or the requirement specification from the design information;
• recognizing, by a recognition unit of the design support apparatus, a relationship between the extracted phrases or between the extracted numerical values related to the component, the function, or the requirement specification based on a content structure of the design information and a co-occurrence;
• associating, by an association unit of the design support apparatus, the relationship between the phrases and between the numerical values;
• and
• outputting, by an output unit of the design support apparatus, a result of the association executed by the association unit.