Multi-level knowledge representation and retrieval of complex product design based on BOM

The development of product becomes increasingly collaborative and parallel, which makes the need for design reuse more critical. This paper proposes a framework to enable effective development of complex product by supporting the management of design knowledge, which refers to metadata, structural, functional and behavioral information. The multi-level knowledge represented by Base Object Model can be seen as special cases of web services, as BOMs are fundamentally XML documents. Surrounding the effective management of knowledge, the method for the retrieval of multi-level knowledge is developed including the process of retrieving, matching and assembling. Since the knowledge is stored in the form of a tree structure, the depth-first search (DFS) and breadth-first search (BFS) are applied to the retrieval algorithm and similarity is used to calculate the match degree. The framework is implemented in the development of an example missile, which demonstrates that its useful for the re-use of design knowledge.