Coordinated influence request in product object definition

Product model enhances engineering work by the application of techniques such as modeling by features, contextual definition of engineering objects, application of active knowledge, and real time analysis of product modification consequence. These achievements are efficient in local product definition where small number of parts is considered. However, decision on a single product object in large structures is made difficult by high number of unorganized relationships and untraceable contextual chains. Simultaneous affect of several humans on a single decision considering consequences on many product objects can not be defined in current modeling systems. The authors recognized that an enhanced knowledge based product object definition is required with product wide decision support. They did researches in this area and introduce recent results in this paper. The aim is to give a better control of product model definition than model representation capability of the currently applied direct object parameter and relationship based control method can provide. In this paper, product information in current product lifecycle management systems is analyzed and main information connections of product model are identified. Following this, the authors introduce their new modeling method in order to contribute to the solution of the above problem. First of all, knowledge communication in the current and the proposed product definitions are explained. The main contribution of this paper includes new findings in requested influence based coordinated product definition process.