Knowledge integration and sharing for collaborative molding product design and process development

This study presents a systematic approach to developing a knowledge integration and sharing mechanism for collaborative molding product design and process development. The proposed approach includes the steps of (i) collaborative molding product design and process development process modeling, (ii) an ontology-based knowledge model establishment, (iii) knowledge integration and sharing system framework design, (iv) ontology-based knowledge integration and sharing methods development, and (v) ontology-based knowledge integration and sharing mechanism implementation. The mechanism can support collaborative molding product design and process development by providing functions of knowledge integration and sharing. Results of this study facilitate the knowledge integration and sharing of collaborative molding product design and process development to satisfy the product knowledge demands of participants, and thus increase molding product development capability, reduce molding product development cycle time and cost, and ultimately increase molding product marketability.     

A user requirement driven framework for collaborative design knowledge management

In today’s competitive global marketplace and knowledge-based economy, user requirement becomes an important input information for enterprises to develop new product and a critical factor to drive product collaborative design evolution. Meanwhile, there remains no consensus on how best to support knowledge activities and significant challenges to establishing design information management facing to rapid collaborative product development with dynamic user requirement. This paper introduces solutions for designer to deal with dynamic user requirement information through requirement evaluation and prediction method. In this study, we propose a user requirements-oriented knowledge management concept that is based on a four level hierarchy map model with special regard to knowledge collaboration and information communication. Furthermore, a novel distributed concurrent and interactive user requirement database was constructed, and the framework driven by user requirement was put forward to support collaborative design knowledge management. Finally, the service robot design project of a start-up company is used as a case study to explain the implementation of proposed framework.     

基于综合集成法的复杂产品协同设计过程模型及框架研究

建立过程模型及框架,将设计过程有效地表达出来,是协同设计的基础。 论文针对复杂产品设计过程的特征,根据综合集成法,建立了一个以时间、粒度、并行度三 维分布的多层次复杂产品协同设计过程模型。该过程模型在时间维强调多阶段综合,在并行 度维强调多专业综合,在粒度维强调分解与综合的迭代。在该过程模型基础上,结合专家体 系、知识体系、机器体系,提出基于综合集成法的复杂产品协同设计过程框架。该框架中, 机器体系依靠知识体系中的知识,给专家群体提供帮助,专家群体在机器体系提供的项目管 理、群体研讨、协同决策、三维可视化等支持工具帮助下,实现人机结合、多专业结合、多 阶段结合的协同设计过程,以提高复杂产品的协同设计效率。最后介绍了相关原型系统。     

基于集成化知识的产品概念设计技术研究

从用户知识出发，通过对用户内隐性知识的获取、表征、传递、运用的研究，探讨了“用户意象与设计知识”的映射以及“特征基、特征和风格”三层表达体系；建立了用户内隐性知识的获取、表征与运用模型，设计知识的表达模型，用户知识与设计知识的整合模型；提出了基于集成化知识的产品概念设计理论，以手机设计系统为例进行了验证，支持用户和设计师在同一个平台上协同工作，为产品协同设计、网络化设计提供一致的知识体系。     

冲压产品异地协同设计/制造系统

运用IDEF0过程建模方法构建冲压产品异地协同设计／制造系统过程模型,着重论述了协同工作中知识获取、基于广义框架／规则模式的知识表示、基于应用单元概念的知识引用和基于层次的CSCW工具集成等关键技术．在此基础上,提出了系统的层次体系结构,从而形成比较完善的冲压产品协同设计／制造环境．系统充分体现了IDEF0结构分析方法、CSCW方法学、知识工程和CAx的有机结合．通过实际应用,该系统能有效地提高相关企业的冲压产品协同设计／制造能力．     

基于手势和草图的概念设计协同交互的研究

基于手势和草图的交互模式提供了一种自然和谐的方式来支持概念设计协同操作,促进协同工作系统的发展与应用．基于以用户为中心的设计,比较了不同方式的概念设计过程,提出了基于手势和草图的协同设计方法,进一步讨论了以草图为设计过程中的信息载体,分析了草图信息模型;基于手势操作,提出了协同上下文感知的概念和协同设计上下文描述模型;最后分析并给出面向同步编辑的草图交互设计和双向约束求解方法．所提出的协同设计方法自然简便,提高了设计效率,改善了人机交互方式．     

Internet Based Collaborative Product Conceptual Design

Generation of Product Concept needs to give full play to the designers' innovative potential and collaborative work of experts in different fields. However, the collaborative innovative capabilities of geographically distributed designers are often limited and hindered by space and time. Therefore, on the basis of the requirements analysis of Internet based collaborative conceptual design and the research work we have done, this paper proposes the overall framework of supporting collaborative conceptual design on Internet. Based on this overall framework, the authors further put forward collaborative conceptual design process model that includes three stages: concept generation, concept communication and optimal product concept selection. At the end of the paper, the experiment environment of collaborative design is described. The overall framework and collaborative conceptual design process model proposed can take full advantage of Internet and give full play to experts' experiences and wisdom, so that the rapid development and innovative design of product can be provided with effectively and efficiently implemental mode and support on Internet.     

The application of ubiquitous multimodal synchronous data capture in CAD

Design is an interactive and iterative process where the designer’s skills and knowledge are fused with emotive rationales aided by design tools. A design solution is thus influenced by the designer’s creativity, experience and emotional perception. Consequently, there is a need within computer aided design (CAD) research for ubiquitous tools to capture the affective states of engineers during design activities to further understand the product design process.This paper proposes a generic framework for ubiquitous multimodal synchronous data capture, based around the capture of CAD system activities, to monitor and log a variety of inputs, interactions, biophysical data and design solutions with a view to providing meta and chronological performance data for post design task analysis. The framework has been employed in two use cases namely, a CAD station activity and a collaborative design review. The results of these trials validated the architecture and use of the ubiquitous data capture approach demonstrating the practical application of time-phased data capture, analysis and the subsequent output of metadata in CAD environments providing a new perspective on, and a new way of investigating CAD-based design activities.This research also extrapolates the framework’s usefulness into future CAD and PLM systems by arguing why and how they need to adopt such ubiquitous platforms. It also subjectively points to potential opportunities and issues that might arise when implementing the ubiquitous multimodal metadata architecture in a real-life environment.     

A collaborative system for capturing and reusing in-context design knowledge with an integrated representation model

Current research on design knowledge capture and reuse has predominantly focused on either the codification view of knowledge or the personalisation view of knowledge, resulting in a failure to address designers’ knowledge needs caused by a lack of context of information and insufficient computational support. Precisely motivated by this gap, this work aims to address the integration of these two views into a complete, contextual and trustworthy knowledge management scheme enabled by the emerging collaborative technologies. Specifically, a knowledge model is developed to represent an integrated knowledge space, which can combine geometric model, knowledge-based analysis codes and problem-solving strategies and processes. On this basis, a smart collaborative system is also designed and developed to streamline the design process as well as to facilitate knowledge capture, retrieval and reuse as users with different roles are working on various tasks within this process. An engineering case study is undertaken to demonstrate the idea of collaborative knowledge creation and sharing and evaluate the effectiveness of the knowledge representation model and the collaborative technologies employed. As evidenced in the development and evaluation, the methods proposed are effective for capturing an integrated knowledge space and the collaborative knowledge management system not only facilitates problem-solving using knowledge-based analysis but also supplies in-context tacit knowledge captured from the communications between users throughout the design process.     

Modularized design-oriented systematic inventive thinking approach supporting collaborative service innovations

The rapid evolution of new service systems raises crucial challenges for service design and requires effective methods. This study depicts a conceptual service design framework, called design-oriented systematic inventive thinking (DSIT) approach, which can be applied in different problem contexts. DSIT is presented as a new systematic and collaborative intelligence approach for creating and evaluating complex service systems using multi-criteria data analytics. DSIT synthesizes the current field of TRIZ service-design knowledge system and the emerging area of non-TRIZ service-design knowledge system. DSIT enables integrated development of service offerings at four dimensions and provides the matching integrated service design approach for each dimension. Four types of service design approaches are conceptualized as “human-independent service engineering,” “problem-clarified service engineering,” “solution-converged service engineering,” and “designing for service.” A new service computer-aided design system (service CAD) named DSIT explorer is developed consisting of customization, compatibility, and extensiveness of DSIT modules. A pervasive and smart collaborative service system (i.e., the smart MOS burger service solution) designed using DSIT explorer is illustrated. DSIT is a holistic, interdisciplinary, and collaborative service design concept, which is incorporated into a collaborative and intelligent service CAD framework to enable systematic inventive thinking throughout phases of service design lifecycle from problem definition, problem resolution, to solution evaluation.     

Ontology-based assembly design and information sharing for collaborative product development

To realize a truly collaborative product design and development process, effective communication among design collaborators is a must. In other words, the design intent that is imposed in a product design should be seized and interpreted properly; heterogeneous modeling terms should be semantically processed both by design collaborators and intelligent systems. Ontologies in the Semantic Web can explicitly represent semantics and promote integrated and consistent access to data and services. Thus, if an ontology is used in a heterogeneous and distributed design collaboration, it will explicitly and persistently represent engineering relations that are imposed in an assembly design. Design intent can be captured by reasoning, and, in turn, as reasoned facts, it can be propagated and shared with design collaborators. This paper presents a new paradigm of ontology-based assembly design. In the framework, an assembly design (AsD) ontology serves as a formal, explicit specification of assembly design so that it makes assembly knowledge both machine-interpretable and to be shared. An Assembly Relation Model (ARM) is enhanced using ontologies that represent engineering, spatial, assembly, and joining relations of assembly in a way that promotes collaborative assembly information-sharing environments. In the developed AsD ontology, implicit AsD constraints are explicitly represented using OWL (Web Ontology Language) and SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language). This paper shows that the ability of the AsD ontology to be reasoned can capture both assembly and joining intents by a demonstration with a realistic mechanical assembly. Finally, this paper presents a new assembly design information-sharing framework and an assembly design browser for a collaborative product development.     

Knowledge management of product design: A requirements-oriented knowledge management framework based on Kansei engineering and knowledge map

For the knowledge management of product design, knowledge innovation is the foundation and motivation for the independent innovation and enhancing the core competitiveness. Most of the product knowledge exists in the brain of designers. How to obtain the required knowledge accurately in massive knowledge database becomes the key to knowledge innovation. However, the design knowledge based on consumer’s requirement has not been extensively studied. There is no consensus on the reasonable and effective implementation of the knowledge management framework to select the optimum design knowledge based on the consumer’s requirements. In this study, to efficiently realize the knowledge acquisition and knowledge selection, a requirements-oriented knowledge management model is established, with the advantage of Kansei engineering in knowledge acquisition and multi-objective decision-making in knowledge selection. Finally, the outdoor leisure chairs design is used as a case study to explain the implementation of the knowledge management framework. To reveal the advantages of the framework, it was compared with other frameworks. The results show that the proposed knowledge management framework is more efficient and provided a method of designers to acquire design knowledge based on the consumer’s requirements.     

Estimate design intent: a multiple genetic programming and multivariate analysis based approach

Understanding design intent of designers is important for managing design quality, achieving coherent integration of design solutions, and transferring design knowledge. This paper focuses on automatically estimating design intent, represented as a summation of weighted functions, based on the operational and product-specific information monitored through design processes. This estimated design intent provides a basis for us to identify the evaluation tendency of designers' ways of doing design. To represent and estimate the design intent, we introduced a staged design evaluation model as a general yet powerful model of design decision-making process, and developed a methodology for estimation of design intent (MEDI) as a reasoning method. MEDI is composed of two basic algorithms. One is our newly introduced multiple genetic programming (MGP) and the other is statistical multivariate analysis including principal component analysis and multivariate regression. The characteristics of MEDI are; (1) principal component analysis provides approximate evaluation of how much preferable a specific product model is, assuming the final product model (or design) is the most preferable one; (2) MGP enables us to simultaneously estimate both structure of target performance functions and the approximate values of their weights for a domain of design problems; and (3) multivariate regression readjusts the approximate weights obtained by MGP into more accurate ones for specific design problems within the domain. Our framework and methods have been successfully tested in a case study of designing a double-reduction gear system.     

基于协作的协同设计过程控制对象知识建模技术

在分析协同设计领域问题的协作求解模式基础上，分析了协同设计领域问题求解的过程控制对象，提出了协同设计领域问题求解过程控制对象的多层次协作求解机制。并以领域问题协作求解、业务处理的过程控制以及领域控制知识的处理过程为核心，构建基干协作的协同设计过程控制对象的知识处理模型。最后以活动框架的业务处理过程控制为背景，讨论了协同设计领域问题求解过程控制对象的知识处理算法及其程序实现过程。     

面向知识服务的科技资源协同创新服务机制

在对知识即服务元模型进行定义与分析的基础上,提出了一个科技资源协同服务元模型STRCS,该模型包括科技资源模型、服务模型、协同模型3个子模型以及相应的科技资源与服务。同时,通过建立KAAS元模型与科技资源服务元模型间的映射机制,为科技资源平台中的知识服务模式提供了服务映射机制。在此基础上,进一步提出了一种面向KAAS的科技资源协同服务分类与知识聚合新机制,并针对动态多标签和动态文档索引的分类和聚合方式提出了优化的机制,以及科技资源的个性化服务与科技资源的知识协同机制;通过开发实现了一个基于社会化与知识服务化的科技资源公共服务平台,并利用算法优化提升了科技资源平台个性化推荐的能力与精确度,从而为解决科技资源协同创新和个性化知识服务的实施与集成提供了一个新方案。     

Design formalism for collaborative assembly design

Joints in product design are common because of the limitations of component geometric configurations and material properties, and the requirements of inspection, accessibility, repair, and portability. Collaborative product design is emerging as a viable alternative to the traditional design process. The collaborative assembly design (AsD) methodologies are needed for distributed product development. Existing AsD methodologies have limitations in capturing the non-geometric aspects of designer's intent on joining and are not efficient for a collaborative design environment. This paper introduces an AsD formalism and associated AsD tools to capture joining relations and spatial relationship implications. This AsD formalism allows the joining relations to be modeled symbolically for computer interpretation, and the model can be used for inferring mathematical and physical implications. An AsD model generated from the AsD formalism is used to exchange AsD information transparently in a collaborative AsD environment. An assembly relation model and a generic assembly relationship diagram are to capture assembly and joining information concisely and persistently. As a demonstration, the developed AsD formalism and AsD tools are applied on a connector assembly with arc weld and rivet joints.     

A smart conflict resolution model using multi-layer knowledge graph for conceptual design

Reducing the impact of conflicts on requirement-function-structure mapping in the early stage of product design is an important measure to achieve conceptual innovation, which relies on accurate reasoning of multi-domain knowledge. As product requirements become more personalized and diverse, traditional discrete knowledge organization and reasoning methods are difficult to adapt to the challenges of continuity and precision in conceptual solution. Knowledge graphs with complex networks have obvious advantages in association detection, knowledge visualization, and explainable reasoning of implicit knowledge, which offer innovative opportunities for conflict resolution in conceptual design. Therefore, a smart conflict resolution model using a multi-layer Knowledge Graph for Conceptual Design(mKGCD) is proposed in this study. A knowledge expression form of FBS-oriented design patent vocabulary is proposed, which is used for knowledge entity recognition and relation extraction based on natural language processing. A label mapping method based on inventive principles is used for patent classification and a four-layer semantic network for conflict resolution is constructed. Through semantic distance calculation, the designer's requirements for function/behavior/structure are smart deployed to obtain appropriate knowledge. A case study of the conceptual design of a collapsible installation and handling equipment demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed approach. The proposed method can not only meet the functional solution and innovation in the context of different design requirements, but also effectively improve the design efficiency in the iterative design process by means of multiple meanings of one graph.     

A collaborative methodology for tacit knowledge management: Application to scientific research

Tacit knowledge, which refers to the know-how, is critical to understand and reuse since it is located in the human heads. It represents the foremost element for human and team evaluation. Seeking for tacit knowledge is achieved only by communicating with the concerned persons, which makes losing it axiomatic if people leave their work without documenting their know-how. Thus, providing a collaborative environment based on a common conceptualization of the domain to formalize the experts’ knowledge and to share their outcomes is required. However, some barriers pertaining to cultural and social factors such as personality traits impede capturing the conceptual model. To cope with these issues, we have proposed a generic two-step methodology that copes with human barriers when capturing the domain experts’ tacit knowledge, their skills, and seeds terms in order to converge to a common knowledge representation. Considering the scientific research management as a use case, we followed the proposed methodology to formalize our scientific research knowledge in the context of network and communication research field. Based on the generated ontology, we have developed a semantic web platform that allows collaboratively annotating experts’ knowledge in a computer interpretable format that can be shared and reused by human and machines. Our evaluation is based on end users’ quality of experience and feedbacks.     

A hypernetwork-based context-aware approach for design lesson-learned knowledge proactive feedback in design for manufacturing

Design lesson-learned knowledge (DLK) clearly describes various design quality problems exposed in past manufacturing stages, solutions and preventive measures. If knowledge management system could proactively feed DLK back into design process, many previous quality problems would be avoided, thus helping designers better implement design for manufacturing (DFM) in a smarter manner. However, since design quality problems are not pointed out in design process, problem-relevant information extracted from design contexts might be inaccurate. In this situation, traditional context-aware approach is prone to acquire design quality problems that designers do not need. Facing these challenges, a hypernetwork-based context-aware DLK proactive feedback approach is proposed to construct hypernetwork-based DLK representation model and predict possible design quality problems in the design process, thus providing corresponding DLK and helping designers reduce the reoccurrence of previous quality problems in DFM. Specifically, hypernetwork-based DLK representation model is first constructed, which consists of designer context network, task context network and DLK network. Based on this model, a context-aware collaborative reason strategy is constructed to predict possible design quality problems according to complex design contexts. To validate the proposed approach, a practical product development case on the shipbuilding design is implemented, and some comparative experiments are conducted. Experiment results show the proposed approach is effective and has a positive performance in DFM. It is anticipated this work opens up a promising way to help designers reuse DLK for reducing the reoccurrence of previous design quality problems in a smarter manner, thus better implementation of DFM.