Ontology-based executable design decision template representation and reuse

Abstract

In decision-based design, the principal role of a designer is to make decisions. Decision support is crucial to augment this role. In this paper, we present an ontology that provides decision support from both the “construct” and the “information” perspectives that address the gap that existing research focus on these two perspectives separately and cannot provide effective decision support. The decision support construct in the ontology is the compromise decision support problem (cDSP) that is used to make multiobjective design decisions. The information for decision making is archived as cDSP templates and represented using frame-based ontology for facilitating reuse, consistency maintaining, and rapid execution. In order to facilitate designers’ effective reuse of the populated cDSP templates ontology instances, we identified three types of modification that can be made when design consideration evolves. In our earlier work, part of the utilization (consistency checking) of the ontology has been demonstrated through a thin-walled pressure vessel redesign example. In this paper, we comprehensively present the ontology utilization including consistency checking, trade-off analysis, and design space visualization based on the pressure vessel example.

Ontology-Based Representation of Design Decision Hierarchies

“…The core of PDSIDES is an ontology (specification of a conceptualization [20]) that is used to organize design knowledge from a decision-based perspective. In our earlier work, we have developed two ontologies for formally representing knowledge related to two primary types of decisions, namely, selection [21] and compromise [22]. These two ontologies enable PDSIDES to capture and document individual decision-related knowledge at a computational level.…”

“…[42] are limited to representing individual (or single) decisions while they fail to represent decision workflows that typically involve multiple decisions interconnected in the design processes. In our earlier work [21,22], we have developed ontologies for representing individual decisions, including selection and compromise decisions, in which the decision-making procedures are computationally modeled with templates and are ready to execute to generate new results in the platform PDSIDES. In this paper, we take a step further to extend the existing selection and compromise ontologies to representing hierarchically decision workflows.…”

“…3. In our earlier work [21,22], we illustrate the use of an ontology for facilitating the reuse, execution, and consistency maintenance of DSP templates. In particular, the reuse of the DSP templates is facilitated with a common vocabulary embodied in the ontology for generating different specific Instances.…”

Design Case Representation Under Decision-based Design Theory

“…Liu (2010) proposed an ontologybased knowledge modeling method and strategies for the reuse of mechanical product designs knowledge. Wang [4] puts forward a four-layer design knowledge structure using various knowledge representation methods to classify and represent design knowledge for complex product. However, the above research works focus more on the modeling of design process, while less attention on the modeling of design case.…”

“…By organizing and managing problem description and solution information of the decision-making process, Panchal (2009) proposes a compromise decision support problem template to make modular divisions, record design process and reuse design knowledge. Ming & Yan (2015) focus on the reuse of compromise decision support problem template, introduces ontology approach to define various modules in the decision template to adapt to the creation, edit and reuse of the decision template for different person. Besides, the consistency check in the maintenance process of the decision support problem template is also studied.…”