Chapter 7: Knowledge engineering

Title: Towards an ontology for open assembly model

Author(s): Xenia Fiorentini, Iacopo Gambino, Vei-Chung Liang, Sebti Foufou, Sudarsan Rachuri, Conrad Bock, Mahesh Mani

Address: National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Gaithersburg, MD 20899 | National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Gaithersburg, MD 20899 | National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Gaithersburg, MD 20899 | National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Gaithersburg, MD 20899 | National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Gaithersburg, MD 20899

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2007 pp. 445 - 456

Abstract/Summary: In any industrial scenario, most products are assemblies composed of either parts or subassemblies produced by different companies. Traditionally assembly information model contain information regarding parts, their relationships, and its form. But it is important that the model also represent the function and behavior. This paper addresses the development of an Ontological Assembly Model (OnAM) in the broader context of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). A model like OnAM can help in achieving various levels of interoperability as required to enable the full potential of PLM. In this paper we first present an Ontology Web Language (OWL) version of the Core Product Model (CPM) [1-2] and subsequently Open Assembly Model (OAM) [3] based on their previous NIST versions in Unified Modelling Language (UML). Besides developing a semantic assembly information model, we further extend this model to incorporate reasoning capabilities. We briefly explore and discuss various tools and methodologies for modeling OnAM with reasoning capabilities. The developed OnAM can be considered an extension to the NIST's OAM with semantic interoperability. This extended OnAM could serve to test the advantages of a semantic approach to represent a product structure evolution i.e., from the design phases and throughout the life of the product. A brief case study is additionally presented to explain the OnAM including rules and reasoning capabilities.

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