Construction and Application of Enterprise Knowledge Base for Product Innovation Design

As most of the knowledge used in industrial product design is based on data files from a previous design, it is difficult to be efficiently applied in supporting product innovation design. This paper proposes a method to construct an enterprise knowledge base (EKB) for product innovation design. A concept of the functional basis of product (FBP) is first proposed based on similar products. The function units and corresponding technical units are clustered to construct an EKB for product innovation design. A retrieval path of the knowledge is then proposed from the functional level. The prototype software is developed to retrieve the knowledge directly through function units and determine the optimal technology by searching and ranking relevant patents. The patent circumvention and Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) methods are used to solve invention problems and obtain innovative solutions. The built EKB model provides a systematic method for the innovative product design process. An underwater separator is developed in a case study to verify the proposed method.