THE CHALLENGE OF HANDLING MATERIAL INFORMATION FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES

DS 68-6: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 11), Impacting Society through Engineering Design, Vol. 6: Design Information and Knowledge, Lyngby/Copenhagen, Denmark, 15.-19.08.2011

Year: 2011
Editor: Culley, S.J.; Hicks, B.J.; McAloone, T.C.; Howard, T.J. & Chen, W.
Author: Janus, Andreas; Tartler, Dieter; Krehmer, Hartmut; Wartzack, Sandro
Series: ICED
Section: Design Information and Knowledge Management
Page(s): 292-302

Abstract

This article will analyze the challenge of handling material information from different sources and different phases in the development process of the automotive industry. The needs for various kinds of material information are analyzed by different subjects (legislative regulations, construction design, strategically requirements). The information sources are examined in order to understand the differences and the reasons for the difficulties that occur when integrating the material information into the systems and sources. As a result the main problem will be identified, which is the different semantics or naming of the materials. Two possible solutions to overcome the difficulties and to make the available information accessible are evaluated and compared. These approaches are a data warehouse and an intelligent search engine. On the basis of the evaluation the search engine approach will be identified as the preferred one. While a more sufficient solution to solve the problem of the many sources is presented, this article also provides a solution to overcome the problem of the different semantics.

Keywords: SEMANTIC PROBLEMS; MULTIPLE INFORMATION SOURCES; MATERIAL INFORMATION; HETEROGENEOUS SYSTEMS

Download