Research on collaborative conceptual design based on distributed knowledge resource

Conceptual design is an early stage of the whole product development process, which involves the generation of solutions to satisfy the design requirements. It is a crucial issue on how to find proper principle solutions from enormous, isomeric, and even distributed knowledge resources repositories and then ally with these correlative distributed knowledge resources providers to collaborative conceptual design. Design is a task-solving process using corresponding resource, so it does not always have an agency in product design. This paper proposes a model of collaborative conceptual design based on distributed knowledge resources, which is centered on design tasks and based on dynamic knowledge alliance without agency. After a model of knowledge resource unit and a model of Web services based on knowledge resource are proposed, a virtual quantitative and qualitative knowledge resource representation based on knowledge grid is then put forward. The mixed knowledge resource repository is also proposed to support collaborative conceptual design. The strategies of knowledge register, publish, storage, reorganization, orientation, and problem solving based on mixed knowledge resource repository are then discussed in detail. The data exchange mode of principle solutions is then described. The selection strategy of dynamic knowledge alliance members is established. The framework of distributed knowledge resource is also put forward to support collaborative conceptual design. The process of collaborative conceptual design based on distributed knowledge resource is then proposed. The conceptual design of new devices for decreasing resistance of amphibious vehicles is given as an example, which demonstrates that the methodology is obviously helpful to produce valuable principle solutions with distributed knowledge for product innovation.