An ontology-based approach for semantic level information exchange and integration in applications for product lifecycle management
Creators: name: Zhan, Pei
Publisher: name: Washington State University
Year: 2007
Subjects: Programming languages (Electronic computers) -- Semantics

description: During product lifecycle management (PLM), product information from
description: CAD/CAE applications regularly needs to be exchanged and shared between the various
description: applications. However, these applications often have different product data semantics and
description: corresponding representations. The interoperability problem caused by the heterogeneous
description: semantics and data representation is critical and needs to be addressed and automated.
description: Recent research has focused on integration frameworks for CAD/CAE applications in
description: order to improve interoperability. There are fundamental problems that still need to be
description: addressed.
description: We identified the following important roadblocks and sought to address these
description: specifically in our work: 1) The need for an adequate product knowledge representation
description: of engineering design/analysis, which is easily expandable, and customizable for
description: traditional and non-traditional (e.g. virtual prototyping) design information systems that
description: also allows the sharing of product data semantics across all these heterogeneous systems
description: to support distributed, collaborative engineering capabilities; 2) The need for a way to
description: generate product data semantics by using engineering design/analysis knowledge to
description: interpret actual product data 3) The need for a way to reconcile the differences in the
description: different product semantics by finding underlying similarities between different
description: knowledge representations that are from different viewports and reconcile, and use these
description: similarities to then translate product data semantics correctly.
description: This dissertation proposes an ontology-based approach for a semantic level
description: exchange and integration to improve interoperability, which includes an ontology
description: building tool, ontology mapping tools and custom tools to associate ontologies to prduct
description: data. For the purpose of semantic level integration, a way of representing engineering
description: design/analysis knowledge using an engineering ontology is proposed. A layered
description: structure is used for building knowledge into engineering ontologies so as to improve the
description: scalability and composition adaptivity. Based on the knowledge, a semantic layer is built
description: upon product data to use concepts/relations in ontologies to describe actual product data,
description: which can be used to represent understandings about a product design from different
description: perspectives. To enable translating different understandings (product data semantics)
description: using different ontologies, an ontology mapping method is proposed to find matching
description: concepts between different ontologies, based on three basic relation types between
description: concepts: composition, inheritance and attribute.
description: A scenario is explained to describe the working mechanism of the system and to
description: demonstrate the concept of semantic level integration framework for a simple example. A
description: sample assembly is designed and simulated in different software packages and an
description: integrated process is made to exchange information between them. The scenario
description: successfully demonstrates the ontology based approach.