A critical review of Knowledge-Based Engineering: An identification of research challenges

Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) is a research field that studies methodologies and technologies for capture and re-use of product and process engineering knowledge. The objective of KBE is to reduce time and cost of product development, which is primarily achieved through automation of repetitive design tasks while capturing, retaining and re-using design knowledge. Published research on KBE is not very extensive and also quite dispersed; this paper is an effort to collect and review existing literature on KBE. A total of 50 research contributions have been analysed. The main objectives of this analysis are to identify the theoretical foundations of KBE and to identify research issues within KBE, pointing out the challenges and pitfalls that currently prohibit a wider adoption of KBE while suggesting avenues for further research. Key findings include (a) the necessity for improved methodological support and adherence, (b) better transparency and traceability of knowledge, (c) the necessity for a quantitative framework to assess the viability and success of KBE development and implementation projects, and (d) the opportunity to move towards mass customization approaches through distributed deployment of KBE in the extended enterprise.     

Integration of parametric modelling in web-based knowledge-based engineering applications

Knowledge-based Engineering (KBE) is a methodology to efficiently handle complex and iterative processes as well as simple recurring tasks in CAD-based product design. Even though Knowledge-based Engineering’s roots go back as far as the late 20th century, potential of attractive research is still given. As geometry handling in native full Knowledge-based Engineering approaches can still be a challenging and time-consuming task, approaches for utilizing the parametric modeling capabilities of high-level CAD packages were developed. With the rise of web-based technologies, bringing these utilizing approaches to the Web, seems to be the next step in the technological development of Knowledge-based Engineering applications. Even though KBE has found its way to the Web already in many different sectors, planning of large systems based on existing machinery and subsystems, is still at least one open field left. This article connects to a newly developed KBE methodology, tailored for the use within intralogistic system planning, but widely usable in other systems and proposes a software architecture to utilize CAD’s capabilities regarding geometry creation and manipulation by the parametric modelling method in a web-based environment. The architecture is especially designed for implementations of the Knowledge-based Engineering method described within the research context in the field of intralogistics system planning.     

Design engineering—a need to rethink the solution using knowledge based engineering

This paper discusses the current limitations of Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools and reports on the use of knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) in the creation of a concept development tool, to organise information flow and as an architecture for the effective implementation of rapid design solutions. The KBE tool along with supporting analytical solutions has been applied to the Body-In-White area of automotive design. The present methods of using CAD and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) systems do not use a unified product/process model representation and lead to the creation of separate non-relation data models that only capture the result of the engineering process. The KBE method unifies the engineering intent into a single model that allows for existing or novel design solutions to be assessed. These design solutions can then represent themselves in the correct form to the analysis systems. Automeshing is achieved using a rule-base that meshes the model with respect to the analysis solution required, materials and processes.     

Understanding the effect of knowledge management strategies on knowledge management performance: A contingency perspective

The universalistic perspective research on employing a unidimensional knowledge management (KM) strategy has yielded conflicting findings and recommendations in different contexts. This study proposes a contingency model for investigating the effects of KM strategies on KM performance to resolve these contradictions. Drawing on the knowledge-based view (KBV) of the firm, which identifies knowledge type and origin as two key KM dimensions, this study first defines four KM strategies: external codification, internal codification, external personalization, and internal personalization. A multiple contingency model of KM strategy is then developed based on a technology–organization–environment framework. This study proposes that the effectiveness of each KM strategy depends on both external and internal contextual conditions, namely, environmental knowledge intensity and organizational information systems (IS) maturity. To test and validate the contingency model, we analyze data from 141 firms to explain the effects of KM strategies on KM performance. Our results reveal three KM strategies, not including the internal personalization strategy, which have a significant association with KM performance in their hypothesized contexts. This study expands KM strategy research by theoretically developing an advanced contingency model aligned with external and internal contexts and by providing valuable practical suggestions to managers for selecting a KM strategy based on multiple contingencies related to the external and internal conditions of a firm.     

基于知识的CAD系统的体系结构和关键技术的理论与实践

工程设计是一个知识驱动的创造性过程,KBE技术是促进工程设计智能化的重要途径。本文在深入总结前人研究工作的基础上,系统地论述了基于知识的CAD系统的基本内涵、体系结构和相关的关键技术。产品建模的核心问题是建立相关的知识模型和计算模型。本文对知识模型和计算模型,以及它们之间的关系进行了分析。     

架构设计决策管理工具的研究与设计

目前的架构设计决策隐含于最终架构制品中,导致了涉众交流困难、演化代价高、难以复用等问题。针对上述问题,通过分析架构设计决策的属性及决策制定过程,提出一种描述设计决策与其他外部元素之间关系的元模型,在此基础上设计一个结合编码化和人际化的管理策略的架构设计决策管理工具,实现对设计决策的显式编档、管理和复用。     

An integrated data base management system for engineering applications based on an extended relational model

Engineering analysis and design of complex systems require the use of large software components. Development, maintenance, and extension of such a software system needs modern design and implementation techniques. Usually a large amount of data is generated. Flow of data is also quite complex, adding further complications in maintenance and extension of the software. A sophisticated data base management system (DBMS) is needed to support data handling during the run-time environment as well as for the integration of various software components. Design and development of such a DBMS needs new concepts and ideas such that efficiency of calculations is not sarcrificed. Degradation in efficiency due to the use of a DBMS can hinder large-scale applications. The paper describes a generalized relational model to handle large matrices and tables that are encountered in numerous engineering applications. A DBMS based on the model is designed and implemented. The system supports run-time data management as well as data sharing among software components. A preliminary evaluation of the system against some existing ones reveals the new concept and design to be quite appropriate for engineering applications. The system is very efficient and compact. Some details of design and performance of the system are given and discussed.     

基于知识的互感器产品快速设计技术

根据互感器产品设计的特点,本文讨论了基于KBE的互感器产品快速设计技术系统的实现。该系统在已有的设计经验和工程知识的支持下,有效地减少了设计错误,降低了生产成本,使产品开发周期缩短了三分之一。实例应用表明,知识驱动的特征设计方法可以大大提高企业新产品开发的效率,增强企业对市场的反映能力。     

基于Zookeeper的分布式ICE中间件研究

分布式ICE中间件是一款高效的RPC框架,它支持跨语言开发,其中的IceGrid服务是整个框架的核心,主要的作用是给客户端提供位置管理,远程管理,负载均衡和服务注册等服务.在ICE构建的分布式平台中,一旦IceGrid服务出现问题,整个网络通信就会出现问题.IceGrid本身支持主从模式的高可用,但是当主节点不可用时,从节点不会自动升级为主节点,必须在从节点进行手动配置重启,这严重影响了IceGrid的效率.Zookeeper是开放源码的分布式应用程序协调服务,它是一个为分布式应用提供一致性服务的软件,本文提出一种基于Zookeeper的IceGrid服务的高可用改进模型,当主节点不可访问时,由Zookeeper在从节点中进行选举协调,选中的从节点自动升级为主节点.     

Connected communities from the standpoint of multi-agent systems

We study the provision of software agents for connected communities, a class of applications aiming to augment the way people interact and socialize in geographically co-located communities such as neighbourhoods. Following a number of experiments that we have carried out in this area, we propose a multi-agent architecture and we study how to instantiate it in order to design a specific connected community system. We further report on the research challenges, the opportunities and risks raised by agent-based connected communities. Abe Mamdani, Ph.D., FIEEE, Feng: He currently holds the Chair of Telecommunications Strategy and Services endowed by Nortel Networks and the Royal Academy of Engineering in the Department of Electrical & electronic engineering. He is well known for his research into fuzzy logic, which started in the early 70s, and for his research into artificial intelligence in telecommunications. He spent two years working at the central British Telecom Research Laboratories within the Network Management Department. His work was concerned with the application of Artificial Intelligence principally to that company’s network management products, but also to the other research and development activities concerned with Artificial Intelligence. His current research is concerned with applications of software agents mostly for the delivery of services. He is the technical advisor to FIPA—Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents—an International body dealing with the creation of standards in the area of software agents. Professor Mamdani is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering as well as The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Jeremy Pitt, Ph.D.: He is a lecturer in the Intelligent & Interactive Systems group in the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering at Imperial College, London. He was awarded a PhD in 1991 from the Department of Computing at Imperial College, where as a Research Fellow he also implemented a number of innovative software tools, prototypes and demonstrators. His research now is focussed on the intersection of HCI, AI, and digital communication services; and he has made a particular contribution to the development of Agent Communication Languages. He has significant experience of project management: currently he is Principal Investigator on the UK EPSRC/Nortel Networks funded project CASBAh, and is Workpackage Leader on the EU-funded MARINER and MAPPA projects. He was Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Ferrara, Italy 1997–1998. Kostas Stathis, Ph.D.: He is currently a research associate in the Intelligent & Interactive Systems group in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College, London. In 1996 he received a Ph.D. from the Logic programming group of the Department of Computing, at Imperial College. From 1988 to 1992 he has worked as a Knowledge-Based Systems Engineer for Numerical Algorithms Group, Ltd, Oxford, UK, developing Knowledge-based Front-ends to software packages. His development work has contributed to the UK Alvey programme GLIMPSE, while his research work has contributed to a number of Esprit projects including: FOCUS, TEMPORA, LiMe and MAPPA. His current research interests include formulating interaction in computational logic, games as a development methodology for interactive systems, globalisation of interactive systems, multi-agent systems for connected communities, management games for training, and mobile agents for e-commerce.     

Enabling the creation of knowledge about software assets

In most companies two factors play a crucial role: managing the knowledge that is necessary for doing business and managing the hardware and software infrastructure that supports the business processes. Usually, business processes and infrastructure are not optimally aligned.

We investigate how principles from knowledge management can be applied to enable the creation, consolidation, conservation and continuous actualization of knowledge about valuable software systems (“software assets”) that are part of the infrastructure.

Our point of departure is a generic framework for knowledge creation proposed by Von Krogh, Ichijo and Nonaka. We investigate the explicit and tacit knowledge about software assets that may exist in an organization and specialize the framework to obtain a strategy for creating new knowledge about these software assets. By applying this strategy, one can optimize the quality and the flexibility of the software assets while reducing costs.     

Adaptable methodology for automation application development

An adaptable methodology for automation application development (AMAAD) is introduced. This development methodology is based on the key concept that design automation (DA) applications are a subset of higher level knowledge-based engineering (KBE) applications, and thus can be developed using a subset of KBE methods. The proposed methodology is largely built upon two existing KBE methodologies: CommonKADS and MOKA, which have become popular models for automating engineering processes. The proposed extension of these methods introduces flexibility to tailor the process for producing automation software to the specific needs of the problem through the specification of a number of attributes. These attributes are linked to subtasks in the key lifecycle phases of application development. This proposed methodology provides a link between KBE and DA applications and provides structure to the application development process. A software tool was written to facilitate the process of identifying the capability needs of an automated solution, and providing detail of the tasks to be followed for its development.     

Advanced CNC system with in-process feed-rate optimisation

Tight quality requirements and stringent customer demands are the main thrust behind the development of new generation machine tool controllers that are more universal, adaptable and interoperable. The development of some international standards such as STEP and STEP-NC presents a vision for intelligent CNC machining. Implementation of STEP-NC enabled Machine Condition Monitoring (MCM) is presented in this paper. The system allows optimisation during machining in order to shorten machining time and increase product quality. In the system, an optiSTEP-NC, an AECopt controller and a Knowledge-Based Evaluation (KBE) module have been developed. The aim of the optiSTEP-NC system is to perform initial feed-rate optimisation based on STEP-NC data to assist process planners in assigning appropriate machining parameters. AECopt acts as a connector between the process planner and machining environment with the intention to provide adaptive and automatic in-process machining optimisation. KBE based-MTConnect is responsible for obtaining machining know-how. Optimisation is performed before, during or after machining operations, based on the data collected and monitored such as machining vibration, acceleration and jerk, cutting power and feed-rate.     

知识管理的支撑技术及实现框架模型

知识已成为企业重要的生产投入要素,知识管理能将企业战略、信息系统和企业核心能力知识有机结合起来,而成为新的研究热点。该文分析了信息管理与知识管理的关系,指出知识管理是信息管理的新阶段,阐述了不同知识管理环节的支撑技术和工具,提出了一种知识管理系统的分层框架模型,在保证与传统信息系统兼容的前提下简化了系统的实施过程,实现从信息管理向知识管理在技术上的平稳过渡。     

FactChain:一个基于区块链的众包知识融合系统

知识图谱作为诸多人工智能应用的关键,受到学术界和工业界的广泛关注.当前的知识图谱一般由特定组织构建并维护,以RDF转储文件或SPARQL查询接口的方式提供知识访问服务,这种中心化的管理方式存在不能持久化访问的弊端.具体来说,一旦服务提供者单点崩溃,用户就无法以可靠的方式获取知识.此外,知识因时效性可能需要更新,不同来源的知识之间可能存在冲突,传统的知识图谱构建维护方式难以有效地处理这些问题.区块链技术以其分布式存储与共识机制,为知识图谱的分布式构建与管理提供了新思路.FactChain是一个基于区块链的知识管理系统,具有为知识的多源共享与融合建立全新的去中心化生态的潜力.使用联盟链作为底层架构,由区块链、组织和参与人三层结构组成.通过区块链上的智能合约编程实现融合多源冲突知识的真值验证算法,具有在组织层面实现并部署基于分布式应用的参与人管理、在本地局部本体与全局共享本体间建立映射以及结合链上与链下数据响应参与人查询请求等功能.     

Personalization and Context Management

Supporting the individual user in his working, learning, or information access is one of the main goals of user modeling. Personal or group user models make it possible to represent and use information about preferences, knowledge, abilities, emotional states, and many other characteristics of a user to adapt the user experience and support. Nowadays, the disappearing computer enables the user to access her information from a variety of personal and public displays and devices. To support a new generation of contextualized and personalized information and services, this paper addresses the problem of context management. Context management is a new approach to the design of context-aware systems in ubiquitous computing that combines personalization and contextualization. The presented framework for context management integrates user modeling and context modeling, which can benefit from each other and give rise to more valid models for personalized and contextualized information delivery. The paper will introduce a base framework and tools for designing context-aware applications and decompose the underlying framework into its foundational components. As two illustrative application cases, the paper discusses implementations of an intelligent advertisement board and an audio-augmented museum environment.     

基于CAFISE Framework的高适应性面向服务软件开发

在企业及电子政务应用中,由资源分布异构及需求动态变化而产生的问题越来越严重,如何让应用快速适应这些变化一直是人们关注的一个研究难题.首先给出了一个面向服务的支持业务端编程的适应性软件结构框架CAFISE(convergent approach for information system evolution)Framework,然后给出了基于该框架的面向服务的适应性软件开发方法.CAFISE Framework对异构资源的服务化、业务化及开放动态的面向服务软件体系结构提供了较好的支持.基于该结构框架的开发方法,从对影响软件的环境要素分析入手,通过质量属性驱动的体系结构分析,重点针对应用要适应的变化进行结构设计,最终通过以体系结构为基础的业务端编程,实现面向服务应用的即时开发与演化.在实际项目中的使用及实验证明:用该框架和方法开发的面向服务应用,能够较好地适应异构资源的动态变化及用户业务变更,能以较低的代价实现企业及电子政务面向服务应用的持续演化.     

An organizational approach to designing an intelligent knowledge-based system: Application to the decision-making process in design projects

Knowledge-based engineering (KBE) approaches are designed to reduce the time and cost of product development by capturing, retaining and re-using design knowledge. They currently focus on repetitive design tasks where knowledge is considered as a static resource. However, knowledge is intrinsically linked to the organizations and people who use it. Thus, to be efficient, these knowledge-based systems (KBS) have to be able to take into account all the mechanisms of knowledge creation, sharing and evaluation made by the users. Using the agent paradigm, new knowledge-based systems can be designed in order to address this research issue. Indeed, the agents have social abilities and are able to achieve very complex tasks. These two features are necessary for making a knowledge-based system efficient. However, there still exists today a lack of approaches and methodologies to help design such applications. This paper presents DOCK, a methodology to design an intelligent knowledge-based system that aims to support the knowledge management process. In order to take into account all the mechanisms of knowledge generation, sharing and re-use, DOCK is based on the hypothesis that efficient modelling of human organizations, by highlighting their roles, collaborations, skills, goals and knowledge, will help the KBS designer to specify an adapted knowledge-based system. Finally, DOCK is implemented to design the SMA SNOTRA that is dedicated to supporting a decision-making process for design projects.     

Design and implementation of an agent-based collaborative product design system

The evolution of computer science and technology has brought new opportunities for multidisciplinary designers and engineers to collaborate with each other in a concurrent and coordinated manner. The development of computational agents with unified data structures and software protocols contributes to the establishment of a new way of working in collaborative design, which is increasingly becoming an international practice. In this paper, based on the analysis of the dynamic nature of collaborative design process, a new framework for collaborative design is described. This framework adopts an agent-based approach and relocates designers, managers, systems, and the supporting agents in a unified knowledge representation scheme for product design. In order to model the constantly evolving design process and the rationales resulted from design collaboration, a Collaborative Product Data Model (CPDM) and a constraint-based Collaborative Design Process Model (CDPM) are proposed to facilitate the management and coordination of the collaborative design process as well as design knowledge management. A prototype system of the proposed framework is implemented and its feasibility is evaluated using a real design scenario whose objective is designing a set of dining table and chairs.