Developing a knowledge-based system for the design of innovative product creation processes for network enterprises

Abstract

The relevance of developing knowledge-based systems used to support innovative processes for creating products and services is related to the objective need to reduce the life cycle of products under the influence of modern digital technologies in developing network enterprises. Well-known research results in the field of model-oriented design of products, processes, systems and enterprises do not fully provide semantic interoperability in the interaction of stakeholders in the innovation process. The aim of this work is to build a knowledge-based system architecture that implements semantic interoperability of network enterprise participants at various stages of the product lifecycle. The work is based on the use of a model-oriented approach to building a digital thread at all stages of the product lifecycle, an ontological approach to semantic modeling of a distributed knowledge base and a multiagent approach to organizing interaction between interested participants in the innovation process. The paper proposes a functional architecture of a knowledge-based system that includes modules for planning the innovation process, forming product value characteristics and functional requirements, construction and value chain design. A multi-level system of ontologies of the innovation process is also developed and its application in the work of functional modules that provide access to associated knowledge bases is described. The development of knowledge-based systems based on the results obtained will allow us to find the best design solutions for the configuration of products and corresponding value chains due to the possible iteration of the innovation process and increasing the semantic interoperability of network enterprise stakeholders.

The use of process benchmarking in the water industry to introduce changes in the digitization of the company’s value chain

“…Analytical skills in enterprises and digital skills of employees are developed to an unprecedented extent. The impact of new digital technologies on changes in enterprise value chains, on productivity growth and economic growth, is the subject of many studies (Garzoni et al, 2020;Bickauske et al, 2020;Telnov et al, 2020;Sommarberg & Makinen, 2019;Valdez-De-Leon, 2019;Trabucchi et al, 2018;Fonseca, 2018;Pagani & Pardo, 2017;Graetz & Michaels, 2018). Accelerated digitization of processes is driven by technological innovation, rapidly changing customer needs, and a variety of environmental, social, political, and health factors.…”

Technology for designing innovative processes for creating products and services of a network enterprise using an i4.0 knowledge-based system

“…The knowledge-based system proposed in [1] for designing innovative processes to create products and services can be implemented in the architecture of the 4th generation industry system (the i4.0 system) [20][21][22], which includes a set of interacting i4.0 components -Asset Administration Shells (AAS), which are accessed by i4.0 applications of innovative processes participants. AAS is a software implementation of the concept of digital twins of created products or parts thereof, as well as related resources: machine tools, production lines, supply chains, actors executing production processes, information assets and organizational and management assets.…”

“…AAS application component services correspond to functional modules of applications. In the case of a bounded context associated with the design of innovative processes to create products and services, services of application components call application modules for the formation of quality characteristics, product requirements, design of structures and value-added chains, as well as a planning module that coordinates the execution of all functional modules [1].…”

“…T he innovative process for creating products and services in a network enterprise is an iterative process of designing a value-added chain in which the conceptual study of the product design is accompanied by the selection of project participants and agreeing with them the conditions for performing work at the implementation stage. The architecture of a knowledge-based system (KBS) that supports the innovative process for creating products and services was proposed by the authors in [1]. Its distinctive feature is the use of digital threads [2,3] and digital twins [4][5][6] technologies for reflecting the design process in the system of product models and related processes, multi-agent technology for organizing the interaction of participants in the value-added chain [7][8][9] and the ontological approach [10][11][12] for automating the search for relevant information sources and organizing information exchange between software agents.…”

“…The multi-agent implementation of a knowledge-based system to support the innovative process for creating products and services is aimed at ensuring the stability of the entire structure and the autonomy and interoperabil-ity of its components, distributed in a computing system, and operating on a single software platform. Since the proposed KBS implements the technology of digital threads and digital twins [1], the article discusses the use of the 4th generation industry software platform (the i4.0 platform) [15] and asset administration shells (AAS) [16,17] to represent the bounded contexts of software agents corresponding to individual components of the value-added chain. At the same time, the composition of functional and platform (infrastructure) services necessary for the implementation of the innovative process to create products and services in a networked distributed environment is determined.…”