The configuration of design and manufacture knowledge models from a heavyweight ontological foundation

Abstract

Problems related to knowledge sharing in design and manufacture, for supporting automated decision-making procedures, are associated with the inability to communicate the full meaning of concepts and their intent within and across system boundaries. To remedy these issues, it is important that the explicit structuring of semantics, i.e., meaning in computation form, is first performed and that these semantics become sharable across systems. This paper proposes an expressive (heavyweight) Common Logic-based ontological foundation as a basis for capturing the meaning of generic feature-oriented design and manufacture concepts. This ontological foundation serves as a semantic ground over which design and manufacture knowledge models can be configured in an integrity-driven way. The implications involved in the specification of the ontological foundation are discussed alongside the types of mechanisms that allow knowledge models to be configured. A test case scenario is then analysed in order to further support and verify the researched approach.

Keywords:

• design and manufacture
• heavyweight ontologies
• Common Logic
• semantics
• Process Specification Language
• entity information

Acknowledgements

The research developed in this paper has resulted from a number of strands of work which have been supported by different funding agencies. In particular we wish to thank: (1) the EPSRC, who are funding a majority of our work on ‘Interoperable Manufacturing Knowledge Systems’ (IMKS) under project 253 of the Loughborough University Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre; and (2) the Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering of Loughborough University for funding research studentships.