Interdisciplinary Semantic Interactions within a Unified Feature Model for Product Cost Estimation

This paper reports a preliminary investigation on automatic cost estimation with a feature-based semantic model. Cost feature has been defined by the authors as a unique class in the unified feature modelling system to address the characteristics of cost engineering entities, constraints and dependency relations. This paper describes the relations between a cost feature and three engineering sub-models, i.e. machining model, design model and other auxiliary data model by associating tangible and intangible data. Further, semantic relations are investigated in early product design process for dynamic, accurate and visible product cost estimation. This paper also discusses cost engineering related functions, associated data structures, and techniques proposed in details. A case study is used to show cost feature properties and functions. Also they are used to illustrate the interactions with the three engineering sub-models to verify the relations.