OntoIMM: An ontology for product intelligent master model

Information organizing principle is one of the key issues of intelligent master model (IMM), which is an enhancement of the master model (MM) based on KBE (knowledge-based engineering). Despite the fact that the core product model (CPM) has been confirmed to be an organizing mechanism for product master model, the key issue of supporting the information organizing for IMM is not yet well addressed, mainly due to the following two reasons; (1) lack of representation of complete information and knowledge with regard to product and process, including the know-why, know-how, and know-what information and knowledge, and (2) lack of semantic richness. Therefore, a multiaspect extension to CPM was first defined, and then an ontology was constructed to represent the information and design knowledge. The extension refers to adding a design process model, context model, product control structure model, and design rationale model to CPM concerning the enhancement of master model, which is to comprehensively represent the reason, process, and result information and knowledge of the product. The ontology construction refers to representing the concepts, relationships among these concepts and consistency rules of IMM information structure. Finally, an example of barrel design and analysis process is illustrated to verify the effectiveness of proposed method.