Research And Implementation On Product Configuration Design Based On Ontology And Rules

Mass customization realizes the combination of consumers'individuation and low cost of mass production. How to express consumers'requirement fleetly and correctly and how to carry out efficient and convenient product configuration are the key problems of mass customization's realization. However, there are some limitations in the existing product configuration methods: difficult to manage configuration model, configuration model is not universal, configuration results are not integrative and so on.A product configuration methods based on ontology and rules is proposed in the background of auto parts configuration design, and its data model and solution strategy are proposed, too. Configuration model including auto parts ontology (APO), configuration rules (CR) and instance matching relationships (IMR) is given. Auto parts ontology stores auto part classes and instances and their properties and relationships; Configuration rules are restriction relationships of auto parts based on their properties; Instance matching relationships are matching relationships between two auto part instances. Using ontology's capability of expressing semantic information and reasoning, rules are extended according to their semantic connotations. Jena generic rule reasoner does reasoning on auto parts ontology using extended rules, through which instance matching relationships are built. The configuration results building algorithm based on deepness search is given. The algorithm begins with configuration requirement model, refers to auto parts matching relationships and uses deepness search algorithm, which can insure the integrity of configuration results. Configuration rules management method based on ontology is proposed. It can realize adding, deletion, search and modification of configuration rules through using ontology's semantic information to extend rules semantically. Taking adding rules as an example, the methord of rule management is illustrated detailedly.At last, an auto parts configuration design prototype system is designed and developed using Jena API on the platform of Eclipse 3.0. This system can help auto designers get configuration results correctly and conveniently according to user's requirement. It can realize fast response and minimize designers'workload. The robotization and intelligent capacity are the most outstanding advantage of the auto parts configuration design system.