Chapter 12: Requirements and Early-phase Collaboration

Title: Semantic structure mapping in the earlier phases of the product lifecycle

Author(s): Manfred Rosenberger, Andrea Denger

Address: Virtual Vehicle Research Center, A-8010 Graz, Inffeldgasse 21 All, Austria | Virtual Vehicle Research Center, A-8010 Graz, Inffeldgasse 21 All, Austria

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2009 pp. 598 - 608

Abstract/Summary: In the global world of product development several original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) outsource a quantity of their engineering tasks. OEM's product and engineering data are structured in a certain way to keep an overview of the complexity. A subset of this data is sent to a subcontractor to be processed and enriched with its know-how but still structured in the OEM's way. Therefore, subcontractors have to deal with different product structures from different OEMs. This paper shows an approach to deal with different product structures and their mapping. It is based on semantic technologies and shows the approach, technical base and a method to bring two structures together. A software prototype build in Adobe Flex 3 verifies this approach. As a result this approach enables product development partners to manage foreign data in their own way of thinking and report results in the partners 'language'.

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