New method for intellectual content driven generic product model generation

Strong demand for definition of multidisciplinary products in virtual engineering environments enforced development of product models towards higher level of abstraction in product lifecycle management (PLM) systems. In order to achieve this, the requirement, functional, logical, and physical (RFLP) structure was included in leading industrial product models. Modeling of product in RFLP structure extended product related problem solving by systems engineering (SE) methodology. This change was grounded by the application of active knowledge (AK) features in feature driven product models. Modeling by AK features established knowledge control at the generation of product component and structure (PCS) features. In this changed scenario, new challenge is development of knowledge driven procedures for the generation of RFLP structure elements. Current leading PLM systems provide dialogues for RFLP element definition and means for including procedures and knowledge for the generation of these elements. Knowledge is product, company, project, and engineer specific and constitutes intellectual property (IP) at companies. Consequently, it should be defined at application environment. The Laboratory of Intelligent Engineering Systems (LIES) joined to the research in abstraction concepts and RFLP element generation methods and widely published the results. This paper introduces a new method for the knowledge communication between human definition and generation of R, F, L, and P elements. This method is based on an abstraction concept which was developed and published at the LIES. It applies the new initiative, behavior, context, and action (IBCA) structure in order to realize a new abstraction which allows for development of knowledge representation of procedures for RFLP element generation. IBCA structure elements and their connections fill the gap between engineer requirement and associated knowledge definition and elements of RFLP structure.