Information infrastructure for innovative product design in SCM using semantic TRIZ

Supply chain management (SCM) is a promising management strategy in enterprises for knowledge management, electronic (e-) business and commerce. In the supply chain process, the initial product planning and design stages play a crucial role in saving money and time in the production process. In particular, innovative design for improving a product makes enterprises more competitive. Innovation can be enhanced by constructing the information infrastructure to consider four attributes of the product: cost, quality, function and technology [10]. Extracting innovative design considerations for a product from the information infrastructure requires large knowledge bases and solutions to technical contradictions. The theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) supports designers for innovative product design, but can require machine searching of large databases. We describe the construction of the TRIZ ontology and its application to the information infrastructure for product design in the SCM process. We show that TRIZ can automatically treat and share enormous amounts of information through its ontology. We can therefore deduce and suggest versatile alternatives to produce innovative products in the SCM process. This may open up new possibilities to design innovative products.