Knowledge Modelling and Analysis in Design Automation Systems for Product Configuration
Year: 2010
Editor: Andreas Dagman; Rikard Söderberg
Author: Elgh, Fredrik
Section: Platforms
Page(s): 257-266
Abstract
Design automation is an important means for efficient product configuration within an engineer-to-order business strategy. Commonly, the development of a design automation system is an iterative process alternating between top-down and bottom-up approaches. An overall strategy is a necessity for successful system development. However, to successfully structure the design process, retrace all the necessary knowledge and to close gaps in both the process and the knowledge definitions require a complete and detailed understanding of the design problem at hand. The objective with this work is to promote an iterative system development process characterized by the alternation between domain levels and to provide means for ensuring system completeness and functionality. The means introduced in this paper concern knowledge modelling and analysis in design automation systems. An information model, incorporating the concepts KnowledgeObject, Variable and KnowledgeObj_Parameter for knowledge modelling, and a database for the persistent data storage together with the principles of dependencies structure matrices (DSM), supports an iterative system development approach. Further, the quality of a design automation system, in terms of completeness and functionality, can be viewed and analysed continuously during system development, and system deficiencies can be traced by the use of different DSM views.
Keywords: Design automation, knowledge modelling, knowledge analysis, dsm