Development of a conceptual reference framework to manage manufacturing knowledge related to products, processes and production systems

The present work proposes a conceptual reference framework for the integrated modeling of product, production process and system data. The framework is flexible (easily adaptable to different production contexts), extendible and scalable (in terms of levels of details) and integrated (products, processes and systems are all considered and described). The framework has been developed as an object-oriented model by means of the UML (Unified Modeling Language) defacto standard. In particular, the class diagram of this UML model, representing the core portion of the framework, is described in detail. The conceptual reference framework was developed to support both researchers and industrialists - in different manufacturing domains - in the modeling activities behind their problem solving methodologies, also aiding them in exactly modeling the information they need. The basic idea behind the work is that a more effective use of the heterogeneous decision support methods, normally employed at the different enterprise levels, can be obtained if these methods are based a common conceptual model. The first two applications of the proposed reference framework are also described in the final sections.