The languages and logical formalisms developed by information scientists and logicians concentrate on the theory of languages and logical theorem proving. These languages, when used by domain experts to represent their domain of discourse, most often have issues related to the level of expressiveness and need specific extensions. In this paper, we first analyze the requirements for the development of structured knowledge representation models for manufacturing products. We then explore how these requirements can be satisfied through the levels of logical formalisms and expressivity of a structured knowledge representation model. We report our analysis of description logic (DL) and domain-specific rules with respect to the requirements by giving an example of a product ontology developed with ontology web language-description logic (OWL) and augmented with semantic web rule language (SWRL) rules. Clearly, increasing the expressivity of a product ontology also improves that of domain-specific rules, but there exits the usual tradeoff between the expressivity of languages and the complexity of their reasoning tasks. We present a case study of an electromechanical product to validate the analysis and further show how the OWL-DL reasoner together with the rule engine can enable reasoning about the product ontology. We finally discuss the open issues such as capabilities and limitations related to the usage of DL, OWL, and SWRL for product modeling.

1.
1994, ISO 10303-203, Industrial Automation Systems and Integration—Product Data Representation and Exchange—Part 203: Application Protocol: Configuration Controlled 3D Design of Mechanical Parts and Assemblies.
3.
Sudarsan
,
R.
,
Baysal
,
M. M.
,
Roy
,
U.
,
Foufou
,
S.
,
Bock
,
C.
,
Fenves
,
S. J.
,
Subrahmanian
,
E.
,
Lyons
,
K. W.
, and
Sriram
,
R. D.
, 2005, “
Information Models for Product Representation: Core and Assembly Models
,”
International Journal of Product Development
,
2
(
3
), pp.
207
235
.
4.
6.
Burkett
,
W. C.
, 2001, “
Product Data Markup Language: A New Paradigm for Product Data Exchange and Integration
,”
Comput.-Aided Des.
0010-4485,
33
(
7
), pp.
489
500
.
7.
1994, ISO 10303-1, Industrial Automation Systems and Integration—Product Data Representation and Exchange—Part 1: Overview and Fundamental Principles.
8.
Gorti
,
S. R.
, and
Sriram
,
R. D.
, 1996, “
From Symbol to Form: A Framework for Conceptual Design
,”
Comput.-Aided Des.
0010-4485,
28
(
11
), pp.
853
870
.
9.
Gorti
,
S. R.
,
Gupta
,
A.
,
Kim
,
G. J.
,
Sriram
,
R. D.
, and
Wong
,
A.
, 1998, “
An Object-Oriented Representation for Product and Design Processes
,”
Comput.-Aided Des.
0010-4485,
30
(
7
), pp.
489
501
.
10.
Sudarsan
,
R.
,
Fenves
,
S. J.
,
Sriram
,
R. D.
, and
Wang
,
F.
, 2005, “
A Product Information Modeling Framework for Product Lifecycle Management
,”
Comput.-Aided Des.
0010-4485,
37
(
13
), pp.
1399
1411
.
11.
Melody Stokes
, 2001,
Managing Engineering Knowledge: MOKA Methodology for Knowledge Based Engineering Applications
,
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
,
New York
.
12.
Brimble
,
R.
, and
Sellini
,
F.
, 2000, “
The MOKA Modelling Language
,”
Proceedings of the 12th European Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling and Management
, London, UK, pp.
49
56
.
13.
Fenves
,
S.
,
Foufou
,
S.
,
Bock
,
C.
,
Bouillon
,
N.
, and
Sriram
,
R. D.
, 2004,
CPM2: A Revised Core Product Model for Representing Design Information, NISTIR 7185
,
National Institute of Standards and Technology
,
Gaithersburg, MD
.
14.
Lin
,
J. X.
,
Fox
,
M. S.
, and
Bilgic
,
T.
, 1996, “
A Requirement Ontology for Engineering Design
,”
Concurr. Eng. Res. Appl.
1063-293X,
4
(
3
), pp.
279
291
.
15.
Borst
,
P.
,
Akkermans
,
H.
, and
Top
,
J.
, 1997, “
Engineering Ontologies
,”
Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud.
1071-5819,
46
(
2–3
), pp.
365
406
.
16.
17.
Kitamura
,
Y.
, 2002, “
A Functional Concept Ontology and Its Application to Automatic Identification of Functional Structures
,”
Adv. Eng. Inf.
1474-0346,
16
(
2
), pp.
145
163
.
18.
Kim
,
K. Y.
,
Manley
,
D. G.
, and
Yang
,
H.
, 2006, “
Ontology-Based Assembly Design and Information Sharing for Collaborative Product Development
,”
Comput.-Aided Des.
0010-4485,
38
(
12
), pp.
1233
1250
.
19.
Taivalsaari
,
A.
, 1996, “
On the Notion of Inheritance
,”
ACM Comput. Surv.
0360-0300,
28
(
3
), pp.
438
479
.
20.
Artale
,
A.
,
Franconi
,
E.
,
Guarino
,
N.
, and
Pazzi
,
L.
, 1996, “
Part-Whole Relations in Object-Centered Systems: An Overview
,”
Data Knowl. Eng.
0169-023X,
20
(
3
), pp.
347
383
.
21.
Rachuri
,
S.
,
Subrahmanian
,
E.
,
Bouras
,
A.
,
Fenves
,
S. J.
,
Foufou
,
S.
, and
Sriram
,
R. D.
, 2008, “
Information Sharing and Exchange in the Context of Product Lifecycle Management: Role of Standards
,”
Comput.-Aided Des.
0010-4485,
40
(
7
), pp.
789
800
.
22.
25.
Baader
,
F.
,
Calavanese
,
D.
,
McGuinnes
,
D.
,
Nardi
,
D.
, and
Patel-Schneider
,
P. F.
, eds., 2003,
The Description Logic Handbook
,
Cambridge University Press
,
Cambridge, England
.
29.
Fiorentini
,
X.
,
Gambino
,
I.
,
Liang
,
V.
,
Foufou
,
S.
,
Rachuri
,
S.
,
Bock
,
C.
, and
Mahesh
,
M.
, 2007, “
Towards an Ontology for Open Assembly Model
,”
Proceedings of the International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management
, pp.
445
456
.
30.
2005, “
Representing Specified Values in OWL, “Value Partitions” and “Value Sets”
,” http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-specified-values/http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-specified-values/
31.
Liebig
,
T.
, 2006, “
Reasoning With OWL: System Support and Insights
,” Technical Report No. 2006-04, Computer Science Faculty, ULM University.
33.
Brachman
,
R. J.
, and
Levesque
,
H. J.
, 2004, “
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
,”
The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Artificial Intelligence
,
Morgan Kaufmann
,
San Francisco, CA
.
34.
Kifer
,
M.
, 2005, “
Nonmonotonic Reasoning in FLORA-2
,”
Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference in Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning
, Diamante, Italy.
35.
2004, “
SWRL, Extensibility and Interoperability Cautions
,” http://www.w3.org/Submission/SWRL/#7.1http://www.w3.org/Submission/SWRL/#7.1
37.
Jarrar
,
M.
, and
Meersman
,
R.
, 2002, “
Scalability and Knowledge Reusability in Ontology Modeling
,”
Proceedings of the International Conference on Infrastructure for e-Business, e-Education, e-Science, and e-Medicine
, Rome, Italy.
38.
Wache
,
H.
,
Serafini
,
L.
, and
Gracia-Castro
,
R.
, 2004, “
Survey of Scalability Techniques for Reasoning With Ontologies
,” http://www.sti-innsbruck.at/results/browse/deliverables/details/?uid=245http://www.sti-innsbruck.at/results/browse/deliverables/details/?uid=245
You do not currently have access to this content.