A Semantic Network Approach to PPO (Products, Processes, Organizations/Resources) Modeling for PDM Systems

The modeling method to support product development processes (PDP) must have certain characteristics including the ability to represent multiple viewpoints of the product development and integrate with currently available analysis and design methods based on CE concept. This paper describes the reference model to support multiple viewpoints (PPO: Products, Processes, and Organizations/Resources viewpoints) of the product development processes, from which each model (Products model, Processes model, and Organizations/Resources model) can be extracted, as well as produces PPO data schema. This reference model has associative relationships among the products, processes, and organizations/resources. To allow the extensibility to support design evolution, we propose structured dat representation methods using semantic network, which can be constructed through first-order logic. The product development processes is so represented by specifying entities and semantic relationships among them hat he appropriate information can be accessed and all of the relevant attributes about the entities can be retrieved simultaneously.