An expert recommendation system for product empirical knowledge consultation

Product lifecycle, a knowledge intensive process, consists mainly of market analysis, product design and process development, product manufacturing, product distribution, product in use, post-sale service and product recycling. Performing and achieving each activity or its supply chain activities require product empirical knowledge at different levels to resolve product-related problems or make certain decisions. However, effective consultation and sharing of tacit product empirical knowledge would greatly enhance product market competitiveness. Therefore, effectively and correctly sharing product empirical knowledge from domain experts in different organizations require developing an expert recommendation system for product empirical knowledge consultation, which is priority concern for product knowledge management. This study develops an expert recommendation system for product empirical knowledge consultation by using ontology to matchmaking of the required consultative experts quickly and correctly for the product empirical knowledge requester, thus sharing required product empirical knowledge by interpersonal communication to resolve product-related problems efficiently. The tasks involved in this study include: (i) designing an expert recommendation process for product empirical knowledge consultation, (ii) developing an expert recommendation method for product empirical knowledge consultation, and (iii) implementing an expert recommendation mechanism for product empirical knowledge consultation.