INTEGRATION OF PRODUCT AND DESIGN-DATA USING A METADATA-BASED AND A RULE-BASED APPROACH

A design task is realized by several design activities defining a desi gn process. The decomposition of design tasks into design activities i s necessary because of the complexity of the tasks, of the design obje cts, and of the design methodologies and technologies, Today, computer aided tools are used for realizing the various design activities. Sin ce they cannot realize all design activities, design objects must be p ipelined through a number of such tools until the final design goals a re reached, The result of a CA-tool forms the problem definition of th e succeeding CA-tool, Since each CA-tool manages the product data by a n individual data management system, the key problem is integrating de sign processes is the integration of the product and design data manag ement. An often applied solution is a common product database, where a ll product data is stored in a universal and neutral way, But this con cept has severe drawbacks: the representation and interpretation of pr oduct data is tedious and subjective, because product data has complex semantics, It requires training and expertise, and could be erroneous by making liberal use of common sense, This is where knowledge-based techniques come in. Hence, we introduce the knowledge-based META-NDB-c oncept. Following this concept, more attention is paid to a descriptio n of the semantics of product data than to product data itself. The ME TA-NDB-concept provides an abstract, generic and flexible methodology for integrating the product data management. Finally, a true open syst em architecture is provided.