The Development Of A Design Ontology For Products And Processes

This research develops a methodology called, Design Knowledge Acquisition Process (DKAP) for creating ontology of product and process design using IDEF5 and to develop a consistency matrix for checking accuracy of captured information. It constructs an ontology of a generic product and process design using the developed DKAP methodology. Designing products and processes is very challenging and vital for manufacturing enterprises to stay in the competitive market. Manufacturers want to launch their products in the market as quickly as possible while satisfying their customers in terms of quality, cost and delivery. In order to lunch the products early and/or to reduce the product design time, manufacturing enterprises need to have accurate design information readily available at the right time. Recent research has focused on the use of ontologies to promote the sharing of knowledge. Ontologies are becoming increasingly important because they provide the critical semantic foundation for the rapidly expanding field of knowledge. They are very useful for knowledge reuse, knowledge sharing, and enterprise modeling. Design ontology is a hierarchically structured set of terms for describing design domain that can be used as a skeletal foundation for a knowledge base. It can help the collaborative design team by providing accurate design information and guidelines. DKAP is a step-by-step methodology, which captures the product & process design knowledge, stores in reusable format, and shares this knowledge across manufacturing enterprises. DKAP addresses three critical aspect of design ontology. It explores availability of similar domain ontologies for reuse, check accuracy & consistency of captured knowledge, and share captured knowledge in addition to the IDEF5 methodology.