Product family design knowledge representation, integration, and reuse

Product design information captured by current software systems in proprietary data structures makes it difficult to index, search, refine, reuse, distribute, browse, and aggregate design information across heterogeneous organizational information systems. Towards this end, a flexible Knowledge Management System for systematic development, deployment and management of multiple product families is critical. In this paper we propose a methodology to (1) capture and reorganize component design information as a graph called Network Bill of Material (NBOM) to facilitate design information management for a family of products and (2) represent and store design information using ontologies that promote sharing and reuse of components for platform-based product realization. In the proposed methodology, the components and products of the product family are represented as a complete lattice structure using Formal Concept Analysis (FCA). The NBOM and component designs are represented using web ontology language (OWL). An example of one-time-use cameras is presented to demonstrate the proposed methodology.