Structuring a Foundation Basis for Semantic Interoperability in Product Development Process

The continuous improvement of products to attend consumer needs are increasing the product development process's (PDP) complexity. This demands that systems offer support to many different stages of PDP, as much as in tangible products (physical objects) as in intangible products (services, software). Concurrently, it was identified a considerable increase in the quantity and level of detailing of the information from those systems. However, there was also an increase in the number of semantical obstacles on sharing the latter. These semantical obstacles are mainly related to the heterogenic nature of the information, which has its captured meaning interpreted in a divergent way, increasing the project costs and development time. In this context, along with the Interoperable Product Design Manufacture System (IPDMS) concept, this article proposes the development of the core ontologies from the foundation view of this new methodology, in order to aid the semantical interoperability in the Product Design stage, further improving the exchange of information during different phases of the PDP. The first stage of this research is dedicated to review the main concepts on PDP, interoperability and ontology engineering. The second stage is dedicated to the concept exploration on the creation of core ontologies and its relation to the foundation view of the IPDMS.The final stage regards the creation of the core ontologies, which will serve as basis for further development of the system and work as knowledge basis for the entire concept. This will allow an analysis on consistency and information sharing with other elements of the Product Design and Manufacture in future stages. The creation of the core ontologies was related to the development of a plastic injected product, gathering domains such as Design and Materials, that will further combine to create the product model ontology. The development of the concept can bring advantages to the PDP and increase the automation during the decision making process. This tool of support showed potential to aid the exchange of information and inconsistency analysis at the product development process in the future, allowing risks reduction and rework at advanced project stages, also remarkably reducing time and total project costs.