Knowledge-Based Platform for Collaborative Innovation Development of Products

The platform of distributed design and resource sharing is important for medium-sized and small companies in developing products to improve competitiveness. As a background of creative product design, a knowledge model based on product collaborative innovation development of products (CIDP) is proposed. Characteristics of CIDP are analyzed, and the framework and key technologies of the CIDP-platform based knowledge studied. Through integration of existing system and interface designs, a development platform has been built to support the PCID within knowledge-based engineering (KBE). An example is presented, indicating that the prototype system is maneuverable and practical.

Criteria for Aggregating Sustainable Development Indicators as a Way of Modeling Through “Live and Work” City Index

Measuring and comparing sustainable development levels of cities,regions,and projects are an essential procedure in creating and maintaining sustainable urban futures.Introducing a new urban sustainable development assessment model:The Live and Work(LaW)City Model.As an indicator-based sustainable development indexing model,it aims to assist planners and policy makers in their decisionmaking procedures and development of cities by providing an integrated assessment framework.Several efforts were done to develop composite indicators,but it was concluded that most of them focused on environmental dimensions and neglected the overlapping of the other influential ones.The paper gives an overview of the nature and importance of composite indicators and how it can be structured and implemented precisely;overcoming its drawbacks,to gauge and rank the performance of cities across the demands of people,planet,and profit,as a way of achieving the LaW balance criteria.The methodology of the model is developed by following a set of logical steps such as weighing,normalization,and aggregation of individual indicators.From here,a functional form for aggregation was derived to compute the index.Furthermore,the structure of the model was illustrated in the form of a pie/radar chart.The visualized LaW city index has the communicative advantage of being easy to convey comparative levels of different values.The total values computed could be used to rank cities in a tabular format and gauge their comparable sustainable development performance accordingly.The model can also estimate the sustainable development outcomes of alternative development scenarios during different year’s intervals.This can be achieved by stacking up different model scenarios;making it a relatively simple exercise for both the general public and decision makers to comprehend.

Product portfolio map:a visual tool for supporting product variant discovery and structuring

A fundamental criterion for reusing and continuously improving knowledge in product development is ensuring that the knowledge is explicit and visual.This paper is based on the situation of an engineer-to-order（ETO） manufacturing company,where historically grown product variety and related knowledge are diffuse（tacit）.Consequently,several resources are used in（re）developing derivatives of previous products rather than innovating new ones.To establish a more competitive configure-to-order（CTO） product strategy,product knowledge needs to be revealed,systemized,and structured,and thus made explicit.Hence,product-specific knowledge and product variants have been analyzed and subsequently mapped at architectural,functional,and physical levels in one unified map and tested in the form of a proof-of-concept（POC）demonstrator with the introduced SME company.The result is a product portfolio map that forms a base for defining a systemized,transparent,unified product variant overview,which can be used as a basis for implementing a cross-variant product architecture and supporting knowledge-based approaches.

Knowledge-driven material design platform based on the whole-process simulation and modeling

In order to realize the agility,collaboration and visualization of alloy material devel-opment process,a product development platform based on simulation and modeling technologies is established in this study.In this platform,the whole-process simulation module builds multi-level simulation models based on metallurgical mechanisms from the production line level,the thermo-mechanical coupling field level and the microstructure evolution level.The design knowledge management module represents the multi-source heterogeneous material design knowledge through ontology model,including customers’requirement knowledge,material component knowledge,process design knowledge and quality inspection knowledge,and utilizes the case-based reasoning approach to reuse the knowledge.The data-driven modeling module applies machine learning algorithms to mine the relationships between product mechanical properties,material components,and process parameters from historical samples,and utilizes multi-objective optimiza-tion algorithms to find the optimal combination of process parameters.Application of the developed platform in actual steel mills shows that the proposed method helps to improve the efficiency of product design process.