An Ontology-based Approach for Knowledge Integration in Product Collaborative Development

Abstract

Knowledge integrated model (KIM) is regarded as an effective and critical way to enhance efficiency of product collaborative development (PCD). However, it is much knotty to establish a unified description rule as there exists diverse and heterogeneous designer knowledge. In this paper, an approach based on ontology for KIM is proposed to straightforwardly descript heterogeneous knowledge and achieve a matching of knowledge and design mission objectives easily. First, a KIM of PCD is presented in accordance with the characteristics of product design activities. Hereafter, a knowledge transformation method based on “problem domain – functional domain” model is developed to accurately reflect customer expectations for new products, wherein, knowledge ontology tree including “customer creativity, emotional knowledge, customer needs, and basic knowledge” is constructed to standardize customer needs. Then, a knowledge matching function (KMF) and a Backus–Naur form (BNF) are introduced to measure similarity of request and candidate. Thereafter, a service engine (SE) including KMF and BNF is generated by the knowledge integrated system (KIS). Finally, simulations and experiments illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods and models.

Keywords

• product collaborative development
• knowledge integrated model
• ontology
• knowledge transformation
• service engine