Distributed knowledge sharing for collaborative product development

Product development is a knowledge-intensive activity in manufacturing enterprises. This paper analyses various forms of knowledge resources in the product development process and studies the representation scheme for them. Then a novel distributed knowledge sharing model is proposed for spreading and sharing knowledge among engineers in collaborative product development teams. In a collaborative team, engineers usually come from diverse disciplines; their demands for knowledge are also different from each other. The proposed knowledge sharing model could deliver the proper knowledge to the engineers who may need them. Moreover, our model is based on the engineers’ personal knowledge repositories rather than the centralised team knowledge repository in the collaborative team. The proposed model could bring out an efficient and proactive way for knowledge sharing among engineers in the product development process. The efficiency and usability of the proposed model are validated by experiments referring to the knowledge sharing in a real-world collaborative team of a manufacturing enterprise.     

A framework for developing engineering design ontologies within the aerospace industry

This paper presents a framework for developing engineering design ontologies within the aerospace industry. The aim of this approach is to strengthen the modularity and reuse of engineering design ontologies to support knowledge management initiatives within the aerospace industry. Successful development and effective utilisation of engineering ontologies strongly depends on the method/framework used to develop them. Ensuring modularity in ontology design is essential for engineering design activities due to the complexity of knowledge that is required to be brought together to support the product design decision-making process. The proposed approach adopts best practices from previous ontology development methods, but focuses on encouraging modular architectural ontology design. The framework is comprised of three phases namely: (1) Ontology design and development; (2) Ontology validation and (3) Implementation of ontology structure. A qualitative research methodology is employed which is composed of four phases. The first phase defines the capture of knowledge required for the framework development, followed by the ontology framework development, iterative refinement of engineering ontologies and ontology validation through case studies and experts’ opinion. The ontology-based framework is applied in the combustor and casing aerospace engineering domain. The modular ontologies developed as a result of applying the framework and are used in a case study to restructure and improve the accessibility of information on a product design information-sharing platform. Additionally, domain experts within the aerospace industry validated the strengths, benefits and limitations of the framework. Due to the modular nature of the developed ontologies, they were also employed to support other project initiatives within the case study company such as role-based computing (RBC), IT modernisation activity and knowledge management implementation across the sponsoring organisation. The major benefit of this approach is in the reduction of man-hours required for maintaining engineering design ontologies. Furthermore, this approach strengthens reuse of ontology knowledge and encourages modularity in the design and development of engineering ontologies.     

A holistic view of knowledge integration in collaborative supply chains

New product development (NPD) projects offer a unique opportunity to examine knowledge integration themes in a collaborative network. We propose a finer grained view of knowledge integration mechanisms in collaborative supply chains. Specifically, we propose two different types of mechanisms that are in play within a collaborative supply chain; short-term knowledge sharing and iterative knowledge enrichment. Using data from a large and diverse set of 432 NPD projects, we investigate the effects of knowledge sharing and enrichment between firms and their collaborative network partners, on product concept effectiveness and process performance. Our findings suggest that knowledge sharing and enrichment are significant mechanisms for enterprise-wide knowledge integration in collaborative networks. In addition, upstream knowledge sharing and enrichment has a significant influence on both product concept effectiveness and manufacturing process performance, over and above the effects of downstream knowledge sharing and enrichment. The relationship of upstream and downstream knowledge sharing and enrichment on product concept effectiveness and process performance had varying effects based on the contexts of product type, stage in the product life cycle and project size, indicating a context-specific influence of knowledge strategies. The implication of our results on academic theory and managerial practice is offered.     

The reuse of machining knowledge to improve designer awareness through the configuration of knowledge libraries in PLM

The nature of competition induces the need to constantly improve and perform better. For global aerospace manufacturers, this is as timely an epithet as ever as market forces urge for more growth, better financial return and market position. The macroeconomic aspect is compounded by the growth of product complexity and the need for higher product quality, hence the drive to reduce waste places emphasis upon production costs and the need to improve product performance. This paper focuses upon a rapid development and deployment method that enables the capture and representation of machining knowledge so that it may be shared and reused by design engineers to accelerate the design-make process. The study and mapping of information and knowledge relationships are described and put forward as a lightweight ontology. From this, a set of knowledge document templates were created to facilitate the capture, structuring and sharing of machining knowledge within a collaborative multidisciplinary aerospace engineering environment. An experimental pilot system has been developed to test and demonstrate that knowledge document templates can accelerate the sharing of machining knowledge within an industrial product lifecycle management environment. The results are discussed to provide a case for further development and application within the product domain.     

An ontology for relating affective needs to design parameters: development process and content

Product manufacturers are looking for ways to design and refine their customisation offerings, based on knowledge of affective needs. One approach, CATER, has at its heart an ontology, which supports the exchange of data between the relevant sub-systems in a semantically meaningful manner. This article presents the ontology, specifically emphasising the role of Citarasa, product breakdown and customer selection history. It also presents the ontology development process, including a validation exercise, and discussion of the implications for affective customisation that emerge from the ontology and the development process. This includes issues of how generic an affective ontology can be, the importance of iteration in the customer selection and the functional component of affective requirements.     

Developing manufacturing ontologies for knowledge reuse in distributed manufacturing environment

The use of ontologies for knowledge sharing and distributed collaboration has been widely recognised in the knowledge modelling community, but the lack of a systematic and constructive methodology for developing manufacturing ontologies has impeded their wide usage for knowledge reuse in distributed manufacturing environments. This paper presents a constructive, two-level knowledge modelling approach to systematically develop manufacturing ontologies using both software engineering and Semantic Web paradigms. The UML/OCL (Unified Modeling Language/Object Constraint Language)-based object modelling is used first to serve as a graphical and structured basis for conceptual communication between domain experts and knowledge engineers. The OWL/SWRL (Web Ontology Language/Semantic Web Rule Language)-based ontology modelling then extends the UML/OCL-based object models with added semantics using a progressive, semantics-oriented knowledge acquisition method. An illustrative example for manufacturing ontology development in the manufacturing industry for producing electronic connectors is used to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed approach.     

Agent-based knowledge management system with APQP: implementation of semiconductor manufacturing services industry

Future challenges posed to semiconductor manufacturing services firms demands a system framework which could not only introduce, development, and design new products into mass production with customer-acceptable quality level and profitable approaches, but also re-use best practice in the shop floor to continuously optimise the existing order fulfilment process with effectiveness and efficiency. Advanced product quality planning (APQP) tool integrated with agent-based knowledge management (KM) intelligence develops a systematic framework that responds to such challenges. We propose an APQP tool working with an agent-based knowledge management system (ABKMS) which builds on organisational knowledge resources and works with the APQP concept as well as KM agents. The proposed framework reflects how an APQP tool with KM agents seeks significant inroads into process knowledge repository to recommend a solution for decision making in delivering semiconductor manufacturing services in customer selection, parts and material selection, bill of material, equipments, and tools selection, with a modified APQP concept to work out the approach to be used to develop the streamlined and common process.     

Verification of knowledge shared across design and manufacture using a foundation ontology

Seamless computer-based knowledge sharing between departments of a manufacturing enterprise is useful in preventing unnecessary design revisions. A lack of interoperability between independently developed knowledge bases, however, is a major impediment in the development of a seamless knowledge-sharing system. Interoperability, being an ability to overcome semantic and syntactic differences during computer-based knowledge sharing, can be enhanced through the use of foundation ontologies. Foundation or core ontologies can be used to overcome differences existing in more specialised ontologies and to ensure seamless knowledge sharing. This is because these ontologies provide a common grounding for domain ontologies to be used by different functions or departments. This common base can be used by mediation and knowledge verification systems to authenticate the meaning of knowledge understood across different domains. For this reason, this research proposes a knowledge verification framework for developing a system capable of verifying knowledge between those domain ontologies which are developed out of a common core or foundation ontology. This framework makes use of ontology logic to standardise the way concepts from a foundation and core concepts ontology are used in domain ontologies and then, by using the same principles, the knowledge being shared is verified.     

Managing distributed manufacturing knowledge through multi-perspective modelling for semantic web applications

The development and maintenance of semantic web (SW) means that collaborative manufacturing systems are faced with increasing challenges caused by the growing difficulty in managing distributed manufacturing knowledge. This paper presents a multi-perspective modelling approach to systematically manage distributed manufacturing knowledge on the SW. Considering knowledge engineering as a cyclic and constructive modelling process, a multi-perspective knowledge modelling process is proposed to evolve along knowledge elicitation, engineering modelling, UML-based object modelling, OWL-based ontology modelling, knowledge formalisation and OWL-QL assisted knowledge verification activities. The proposed approach is viewed as a promising knowledge management method that facilitates the implementation of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) in distributed manufacturing for SW applications by integrating the industrial, UML enabled software engineering techniques into recent ontology-based knowledge engineering process. The feasibility of knowledge management through multi-perspective modelling is manifested using the manufacturing ontology for manufacturing electronic connectors.     

基于本体的机械产品知识仓库研究与应用

为解决产品开发全生命周期中知识管理与知识重用问题,提出了基于本体的机械产品知识仓库系统构架。从语法、属性、结构、实例四个方面进行相似性的计算,实现将源本体的实例映射到目标本体的过程。采用OWL本体表示语言对产品知识进行本体建模。并对基于本体的案例推理进行了深入的研究。最后将研究成果应用于制造业知识管理系统的机械产品知识仓库子系统中。     

Graph-based knowledge reuse for supporting knowledge-driven decision-making in new product development

Pre-existing knowledge buried in manufacturing enterprises can be reused to help decision-makers develop good judgements to make decisions about the problems in new product development, which in turn speeds up and improves the quality of product innovation. This paper presents a graph-based approach to knowledge reuse for supporting knowledge-driven decision-making in new product development. The paper first illustrates the iterative process of knowledge-driven decision-making in new product development. Then, a novel framework is proposed to facilitate this process, where knowledge maps and knowledge navigation are involved. Here, OWL ontologies are employed to construct knowledge maps, which appropriately capture and organise knowledge resources generated at various stages of product lifecycle; the Personalised PageRank algorithm is used to perform knowledge navigation, which finds the most relevant knowledge in knowledge maps for a given problem in new product development. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach are demonstrated through a case study and two performance evaluation experiments.     

Investigating the role of business processes and knowledge management systems on performance: A multi-case study approach

In the ever-changing and competitive market place, organisations continuously need to improve their competitive advantage. One method to accomplish this is to form collaborative networks. Both knowledge management (KM) and KM systems play a pivotal role in the success of collaborative networks since information sharing and knowledge assets are so critical to the network. There has been a vast amount of research on KM systems but very little is known about how it affects individual and organisational performance. Drawing on the task–technology fit theory, in this study, we explore the fit or alignment between business process (task) and KM systems (technology) and its impact on KM systems utilisation based on multiple case studies. Subsequently, we investigate the impacts of both the task–technology fit and KM systems utilisation on individual and business performance. This paper contributes to the collaborative network/KM literature in several ways. First, it extends the task–technology fit theory to an important context of collaborative network/KM. Second, it replaces task with business process, which has the potential to help explain KM systems’ success on business performance. Third, the paper explores the positive impact of task–technology fit on KM system utilisation and business performance. Fourth and finally, the study provides insight into the future development of KM systems and how to better align them with managerial purposes.     

Information mapping across injection moulding design and manufacture domains

The process of developing new products is complex, partly due to the wide areas of expertise that need to work together to achieve the best results. Whilst a broad range of software tools is now available to support specific areas of product development, and Product Lifecycle Management systems are starting to support information sharing, the provision of software environments that enable the sharing of information and knowledge across multiple domains of expertise is still a major issue. This paper utilises a set of engineering domain ontologies and investigates the development of mapping methods between them. The work focuses on the development of plastic injection moulded products and has used the particular domains of mouldability, mould cavity design and mould cavity manufacturing to explore the mapping methods across domains. It identifies the critical requirement for mapping methods as understanding the pre-conditional knowledge that constrains the domain boundaries. Experimental mapping methods based on these requirements have been constructed and are discussed in the context of case studies in information sharing for injection moulded product development.     

An integrated decision-making approach for designing and selecting product concepts based on QFD and cumulative prospect theory

In this paper, both unbalanced linguistic terms and a risk decision-making problem with developers’ bounded rationality are considered; an integrated approach of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) is proposed to help increase customer satisfaction and facilitate product concepts selection. Firstly, QFD is employed to provide a customer-driven tool for developers, which can be used to generate product concept alternatives. Subsequently, enhanced information entropy is utilised to prioritise competing Customer requirements (CRs) based on unbalanced linguistic terms. These terms can be directly processed without being translated into fuzzy numbers, where the risk of information loss in fuzzification can be minimised. Product concept alternatives can be generated based on the outcomes of the subsequent QFD process. Moreover, CPT can be considered as a novel method by incorporating the developers’ psychological characteristics under risk, which can help identify the most relevant product concepts. The cost prospect values of each alternative can be calculated by the function based on the cost reference point. The deficit and profit prospect values can be obtained by aggregating the values and weights of potential results, where functions from the enhanced CPT are used. The order of all alternatives can be ranked based on their overall prospect values. Finally, the proposed approach can be evaluated by a case study concerning the development of a new hydraulic breaker. The deliverables of this study are used to evaluate the relative advantages of the proposed approach over existing multi-attribute utility ones.     

Ontology-based neural network for patent knowledge management in design collaboration

In order to stimulate innovation during the collaborative process of new product and production development, especially to avoid duplicating existing techniques or infringing upon others’ patents and intellectual property rights, the collaborative team of research and development, and patent engineers must accurately identify relevant patent knowledge in a timely manner. This research develops a novel knowledge management approach using ontology-based artificial neural network (ANN) algorithm to automatically classify and search knowledge documents stored in huge online patent corpuses. This research focuses on developing a smart and semantic oriented classification and search from the sources of the most critical and well-structured knowledge publications, i.e. patents, to gain valuable and practical references for the collaborative networks of technology-centric product and production development teams. The research uses the domain ontology schema created using Protégé and derives the semantic concept probabilities of key phrases that frequently occur in domain relevant patent documents. Then, by combining the term frequencies and the concept probabilities of key phrases as the ANN inputs, the method shows significant improvement in classification accuracy. In addition, this research provides an advanced semantic-oriented search algorithm to accurately identify related patent documents in the patent knowledge base. The case demonstration analyses 343 chemical mechanical polishing and 150 radio-frequency identification patents sample sets to verify and measure the performance of the proposed approach. The results are compared with the previous automatic classification methods demonstrating much improved outcomes.     

基于知识的汽车后桥CAx集成技术与应用研究

针对制造企业在应用CAx系统过程中如何集成各种信息资源和知识的问题,以汽车后桥产品设计开发为研究对象,提出了一种基于知识的协同CAx集成系统平台框架。采用基于本体论的知识建模方法,提出一种特征参数度量的相似实例检索方法,实现了知识的重用,着重叙述了基于实例推理技术、面向设计流程的知识驱动设计计算、基于特征参数的CAD建模方法、基于模型共享的CAE分析以及产品虚拟装配等关键技术,并开发了此系统平台,实现了基于知识的CAD／CAE集成,有效地支持了汽车后桥产品设计。     

The role of product feature relations in a knowledge based methodology to manage design modifications for product measurability

During product development, the verification process should already be considered at the design phase to ensure that the characteristics of the product are measured effectively and reliably. Moreover, the verification process may prove more effective if the inspector is aware of the specific designer's intents. The development of the new ISO GPS (Geometrical Product Specifications) standards is mainly founded on these considerations. In accordance with the ISO GPS concepts, previous work developed a knowledge based system named Design GuideLines (DGLs). This system provides the designer with the knowledge concerning the manufacturing and verification procedures/tools and better links the manufacturing and verification processes to the designer's activities/needs. Further research then exploited the DGLs to discover the relations among product features determined by a particular manufacturing process.

This work again uses the DGLs to prove that further relations among product features may also be determined by the verification process. This knowledge helps designers in understanding the consequences of the modifications applied to the product features required to improve the measurability of the product. Moreover, inspectors can better manage the verification procedure knowing these relations among the product features.     

A STEP-compliant product data model for injection moulding products

In the current rapidly changing manufacturing environment, most manufacturing companies have realised that the ability to quickly develop a customised product at competitive prices is very crucial for them to survive in the keen competitive global market. Product modelling has been recognised as one of the key factors in determining the success of various product development strategies and for industrial competitiveness now and in the future. Standard for Exchange of Product model data (STEP) is an international standard designed to provide a complete, unambiguous, computer-readable definition of the physical and functional characteristic of a product through its lifecycle. This paper proposes a STEP-compliant product data model to fully support the complete product information representation and management for injection moulding product development. The data model is developed based on the structure of an injection moulding company. The entire data model consists of six data models which are defined to express information from various departments of the company. The data model is described in EXPRESS language, which can be integrated with other STEP-based product data models and databases. Consequently, the proposed system can be further extended for helping other injection moulding manufacturers to improve their product development process. An information sharing prototype system is implemented based on the proposed product data model to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach.     

基于知识图谱的产品适应性设计辅助决策方法

目的 针对当前产品适应性设计过程中缺乏需求与运维知识的融合、设计案例知识难以有效组织、设计知识重用率低等问题,提出一种基于知识图谱的产品改进设计辅助决策方法。方法 建立产品适应性设计辅助决策框架;采用知识图谱构建的方法,通过对产品运维知识数据源的特性分析,完成本体建模,实现知识图谱模式层的定义、知识实体与实体关系的抽取以及知识融合数据层的构建;在运行环境-故障模式映射关系与子图的匹配下,实现新的产品运行环境中潜在故障模式的推理,以及案例数据与CBR适应性设计措施的匹配,生成潜在故障模式下改进设计方案的候选集,并对改进设计方案进行多属性评价,实现改进方案的排序和决策。结果 以工程盾构螺旋输送机产品的适应性设计过程辅助决策为例,验证了该辅助决策方法的可行性和有效性。结论 采用知识图谱技术构建产品全生命周期数据实体关系,能够较好地解决知识融合、知识组织以及知识重用率低等问题,提高了设计效率。     

知识管理系统的运用与深化

在知识经济时代,企业已经开始认识到最宝贵的资产是知识,知识不但是生产的关键要素,而且还是企业保持持续竞争优势的重要手段。企业知识管理系统的有效实施,要在正确的思想指导下,建立适于知识共享的组织结构和企业文化,在理解和实施知识管理时必须坚持积累、信任、共享、交流、学习五项原则。知识管理的目标是实现组织总体发展战略,因此知识共享的过程也必须以实现组织战略目标为前提,重视对共享知识的甄选,建立知识共享平台和存储管理单元,引导知识交流,实施奖励政策。