TAKING THE LEAP: The Methods and Tools of the Linked Engineering and Manufacturing Platform (LEAP)

ion level (i.e. on metadata). A visual interface offers a practical way of managing the matching process. Chapter 3 presents the LEAP semantic approach, including both semantic modelling and reasoning. The approach taken is to define an upper-level ontology, which is then instantiated in detailed industrial use case-specific ontologies. The presentation provides details of how key ontology concepts, as well as objects and their properties, are modelled. Key aspects of Life Cycle Costing, Lifecycle Assessment, as well as Quality Control and Design, are included in the modelling. Relationships are described using the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) to develop reasoning rules, whereas the inference mechanism is offered by an OWL reasoning tool, offering the basis for knowledge-based recommendations. Chapter 4 introduces the LEAP Product and Manufacturing Design Support System. This supports product lifecycle optimisation in the leap platform employing standard programming, and multi-criteria optimisation through evolutionary multi-objective optimisation algorithms. The authors describe its implementation in software following a Model-View-Controller design decomposition and present results from an automotive production case. Among the key valuable contributions of an engineering platform, such as LEAP, is that it empowers teams working on manufacturing design and PLM to act in collaboration. Chapter 5 presents the key concepts of knowledge-based engineering collaboration, emphasising the role of lean thinking and highlighting the importance of offering context-adaptive engineering recommendation services. The collaboration system offers the means for disparate location engineering project support and the chapter describes the involved concepts, models, as well as the key elements and technology components of their implementation in LEAP. Being a sharing and collaborative platform, LEAP handles information in standardised formats. Chapter 6 presents the Open Data Format (O-DF) as an ontology XML schema for all handled objects, and the Open Messaging Interface (O-MI) as a neutral protocol for data exchange, which can be compatible with typical web-based and service oriented protocols. The O-MI protocol comprises conventions for defining operations to cover data reading and writing, which can be consistent with the Observer Design Pattern for event-driven computing, which is highly appropriate for internet of things – enabled architectures. The chapter highlights how the adopted approach maintains a vision of integrating product and process data exchange standards and discusses the Open Life Cycle Management (O-LM) extension to O-DF, tailored to internet of things – enabled data exchanges. The chapter concludes with examples of data exchanges for field data collection in automotive production. Adopting the concepts of ‘Large-Room’ collaboration (Obeya in Japanese) the LEAP platform enables collaboration through a Virtual Obeya collaborative environment wherein, instead of a physical room, the platform offers a virtual collaboration room, and instead of physical notes, data, and other resources, it offers to opportunity of sharing and working on digital versions for such resources. Chapter 7 describes the Virtual Obeya approach and its implementation. Virtual Obeya aims to shorten the time needed for product development thinking of split engineering teams working on disparate locations while enabling them to work on a broad range of shared resources. Enabling the typical functionalities of social computing, Virtual Obeya enables social collaboration of the engineering teams. Examples of its usage on selected use cases are offered, along with an evaluation study wherein practitioners of engineering teams rated the various offered functionalities. Chapter 8 places the LEAP methods and tools development in the context of selected engineering use cases. These include metrology-driven manufacturing, manufacturing design with plant lifecycle cost considerations, and knowledge reuse for automated design in offshore engineering. A discussion is included assessing how business needs in each case are served, while also highlighting limitations and scope for further work. What is particularly welcome in this edited book is the fact that individual contributions form pieces of the puzzle of a complete workflow for integrating, managing, and exploiting linked knowledge in manufacturing design, wherein conceptual contributions are translated into practical application tools and demonstrated on industrial use cases. The Methods and Tools of the Linked Engineering and Manufacturing Platform are therefore a contribution offering a holistic view of closed loop PLM specifically targeting Manufacturing Design, integrating actors, data, and processes, which would otherwise be fragmented. The LEAP framework lays the groundwork for further advances to add more intelligent capabilities in engineering platforms. Knowledge graphs can evolve and their connections and strengths can be ‘learned’. Semantic matching approaches can become yet more adaptive and semantic distance metrics be adjusted based on experience from interaction of system actors. Finally, knowledge exploitation can leverage upon the concept of evolving contexts to empower users to discover and unleash their design creativity via establishing shared contexts for teams using similar collaborative engineering design platforms. Context information management has been increasingly recognised as a key contributor to handling the increasing complexity of managing and utilising large-scale, disparate, and heterogeneous data sources. Managing such challenges not only for data but also for human-contributed knowledge originating from engineering design teams and contributed at large by human actors across the whole lifecycle of product and service management activities would be a natural