Abstract
Mass customization and product individualization are driving factors behind design automation, which in turn are enabled through the formalization and automation of engineering work. The goal is to offer customers optimized solutions to their needs timely and as profitable as possible. The path to achieve such a remarkable goal can be very winding and tricky for many companies, or even non-existing at the moment being. To succeed requires three essential parts: formally represented product knowledge, facilities to automatically apply the product knowledge, and optimization algorithms. This paper shows how these three parts can be supported in engineer-to-order businesses through the concept of knowledge objects. Knowledge Objects are human readable descriptions of formalized knowledge bundled with corresponding computer routines for the automation of that knowledge. One case example is given at the end of the paper to demonstrate the use of knowledge objects.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that the knowledge representations not necessarily need to be physically stored within the knowledge object. The description compartment may consist of references to the representations as well. The user will get the feeling that description and automation compartments form a whole.
- 2.
A human reader of the knowledge base may also follow these paths of automation because they make sense.
- 3.
In the case example all Knowledge Objects are targeting Spread Sheets. However, Knowledge Objects can target CAD-models, databases, constraint solvers, FEM-simulations, or practically any software. The case example was selected to demonstrate the looping functionality.
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Johansson, J., Elgh, F. (2019). Knowledge Objects Enable Mass-Individualization. In: Andrés-Pérez, E., González, L., Periaux, J., Gauger, N., Quagliarella, D., Giannakoglou, K. (eds) Evolutionary and Deterministic Methods for Design Optimization and Control With Applications to Industrial and Societal Problems. Computational Methods in Applied Sciences, vol 49. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89890-2_24
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