Product Modelling Incubator Group Charter

Scope

A "product core" ontology will be created so that statements about a product can be made using:

• The generic "product core". This will consist of a few tens of classes and properties.
• Standard extensions to the "product core" specific to particular applications. The scope will be similar to the information models contained within IFC, STEP and ISO 15926, and to the ontologies being developed within the SWOP and S-TEN projects. These will consist of a few hundreds of classes and properties.
• Reference data which may be defined by engineering data standards such as ISO 15926-4 or by product suppliers. This will consist of many hundreds of thousands of classes and properties.

The use of the "product core" will enable simple operations to be carried out on product data irrespective of any extension to the core specific to an application. These operations could include:

• derivations of bills of materials, and calculations of the material costs;
• calculation of the environmental impact of a product, such as the CO₂ emissions;
• calculation of the mass of a product,
• generation of (re)presentations of product aspects.

A possible sequence of work is as follows:

1. The objects of interest, which include parametric products, variants and actual (local and global) individuals. Note: There are no agreed formal definitions for any of these objects at present. Creating agreed formal definitions will be a task of the incubator group. Hence the scope of the group is defined merely the natural language meaning of the terms.
2. Whole-part relationships between the objects of interest, including strict hierarchies and partitions. Notes: It is a requirement to record product decomposition in an "open world". It is a requirement to be able to access decomposition information to determine all that is part of a product, and to determine the totality of its environmental impact. Whole-part relationships is a big area, and raises questions such as: "Is the hole for a window a part of a wall?" "Are features parts?"
3. Product knowledge in the form of assertion and derivation rules.
4. Configuration management during a design process. This includes the relationship between end-user requirements/objectives and their technical solutions, alternative designs, and subsequent versions of designs, etc. Note: ISO 10303 (STEP) has developed a terminology for this area.
5. Miscellaneous classes and relationships related to configuration management and design and analysis work flow, including the roles of people and organisations in design and analysis activities.
6. Physical properties associated with physical individuals and designs. This topic includes physical quantities, scales, units of measure, nominal values, allowed ranges, default values and uncertainty.

It is not expected that the incubator group would cover any more than items (1) and (2) in its first year.