Föderatives Produktdatenmanagement anhand semantischer Informationsmodellierung

The motivation for this thesis arises from the lack of existing information systems to satisfy the information requirements of today's enterprises. The increase in the amount of data shows the limitations of current systems in terms of data structu¬ ring and highlights the need for the use of semantic modelling techniques. The in¬ troduced approach of "federated product data management using semantic infor¬ mation modelling" improves both computer assistance within the design process and the exchange of information to other fields of activity. The major aspects of this work are • modelling of requirements, • part retrieval, • part numbering mapping and • coordination based on system federation. To support the clarification of design tasks, which is both indispensable and pathbreaking for every design process, an integrated system for task clarification and evaluation is developed. The central concept in this system is the search matrix as a methodical tool for an efficient and extensive modelling ofrequirements. More¬ over, the logical structure of this matrix is exploited to automatically generate a criteria structure for weighting in evaluation processes. Based on a synthesis of current group technology methods, the integrated part retrieval system CAOS (Component and Assembly Ordering System) is de¬ veloped to support a systematic reuse of existing solutions. As a result, for the first time, definite search mechanisms for the whole spectrum of parts are gua¬ ranteed. For the identification of product data, in the majority of cases compound numbe¬ ring systems are used which, in contrast to pure counting numbers, provide grea¬ ter semantics. However, they are inadequate in terms of uniqueness and perma¬ nence. To achieve the advantages of both numbering techniques, the method of part numbering mapping is developed. This method ensures the integrity of the classification through the exploitation of existing database functionality. Coordination on the basis of system federation serves a task-specific connection of CIM applications with a minimum loss of autonomy and flexibility. The basis for coordination is a two-level repository concept which extends each component system with an agent responsible for mapping between local and global represen¬ tations. In the coordinator, only inter-system dependencies are stored centrally and the productive data remains in the systems which created them.