Knowledge-Based Integration of Engineering Design Data

Abstract

During the design project of chemical plants data are generated and processed by means of different software tools. The lack of interoperability of the applied software tools and the extremely complex work processes (concurrent engineering, distributed engineering, etc.) cause inefficient design processes, since merging, integrating and consolidating of the design data has to be largely performed manually. However, principally, there are obvious approaches for such tasks, which can be conveniently described on the basis of rules.For accomplishing of such tasks, semantic technologies offer great potential. In this contribution, the method and implementation of a software prototype is proposed that is based on semantic technologies. This prototype facilitates an automatic procedure for the integration and consolidation of heterogeneous engineering design data with respect to an efficient engineering process.