Product Knowledge Representation and Integration Technology in Web-based Collaborative Design

1 Introduction 1 .1 Product KnowledgeProduct knowledge , which consists of a characteristic set and correlative constraint and rule sets ,can beusedtocontrol andi mprovethe quality of product informationchange1 ,2].Fig.1 showsthe relationship betweenproduct information and knowledge .Product information,such as BOM(Bill of Material) and CAD(ComputerAided Design) models ,is the basic data for product manufacturing while product knowledge describes the con-straints of product information. …

Product Knowledge Representation and Integration Technology in Web-based Collaborative Design

Because of the complexity of modern product design,the web-based collaborative product design aroused considerable attention of manufacturers in the last few years with the development of Internet technology. But it is still hardly achievable due to the difficulty to share product knowledge from different designers and systems. In this paper,we firstly create an ontology-based product model,which consists of PPR (Product,Process and Resource) concept models and PPR characteristic models,to describe product knowledge. Afterwards,how to represent the model in XML is discussed in detail. Then the mechanism of product knowledge collection and integration from different application systems based on interface agents is introduced. At last,a web-based open-architecture product knowledge integrating and sharing prototype system AD-HUB is developed. An example is also given and it shows that the theory discussed in this paper is efficient to represent and integrate product knowledge in web-based collaborative design processes.