An ontology-based product design framework for manufacturability verification and knowledge reuse

To achieve efficient development of high-quality product, manufacturing constraints must be fully taken into account at the early design stage. However, designers lack in-depth knowledge of manufacturing and production. Many time-consuming iterations of design changes are required between designers and manufacturing engineers. In order to minimize this knowledge gap, this paper presents an ontology-based product design framework for manufacturability verification and knowledge reuse to support the sharing and reuse of design and manufacturing knowledge. It aims at providing advices and feedback of restraints of manufacturing processes to the designers during the design process. The proposed framework consists of three major layers which include a foundation layer, a domain layer, and an instance layer. We use the Web Ontology Language (OWL), a standard of ontology representation language, to formalize the foundation layer. It contains the core product model and the standard ISO 10303 AP224 application protocol. The domain layer comprises extensional concepts and relationships for design and manufacturing integration and a rule base for manufacturability verification, which is represented in Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL). In the instance layer, an inference engine is developed based on ontology and rule inference. It provides recommendations of manufacturability. Two case studies are provided as application examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework.