=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2475/paper8
|storemode=property
|title=Method to Create the Library of Workflows
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2475/paper8.pdf
|volume=Vol-2475
|authors=Nikolay Voit,Maria Ukhanova,Sergey Kirillov,Semen Bochkov
}}
==Method to Create the Library of Workflows==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2475/paper8.pdf
Method to Create the Library of Workflows
N. Voit, M. Ukhanova, S. Kirillov, S. Bochkov
Ulyanovsk State Technical University, Ulyanovsk, Russia
e-mail: n.voit@ulstu.ru
Abstract. The authors proposed a new method for automating the of complex
technical systems re-design based on workflows allowing to reuse design
solutions, modify them to meet the conditions, using the “Reuse” concept. The
method differs from the existing ones with project workflows ontology in the
automation to design complex technical systems.
1 Introduction
The key problem of couputer-aided system (CAS) design and development is to
create a successful project. According to the up-to-date Standish Group data, only
40% of software projects are successful (i.e., the projects completed in time and
budget, with all the specified features and functions). And the especially significant
role in achievement of the CAS development’s success is given to the diagrammatic
models in visual forms of business process artifacts, particularly at the concept phase
of CAS design. For this purpose, the visual languages (UML, IDEF, ER, DFD, eEPC,
SDL, BPMN, etc.) were developed, and they are widely used in practice. Such
models’ use sufficiently increases an effectiveness of the design process and a quality
of the design solutions, through the unification of interaction language of the CAS
development participants, the strict documentation of the project-architectural,
functional solutions, and the formal control of diagram notation correctness.
In recent years the large industrial companies and enterprises actively use
distributed dynamic workflows of designing and manufacturing activities. For
example, according to [1], the first generation of product lifecycle statistical
management systems and project workflow can no longer meet the requirements of
many companies. The approach and automated tools of the first generation of project
workflow standardization have already exhausted its resources, and, as a result, there
are poorly formalized processes (often containing semantic errors) increasing the
growth of expenses for their development and improvement.
However, in theory and practice of corporate use of diagrams there are no
effective methods and tools for monitoring diagram representations of dynamic
distributed workflows of CAS, that results in the serious design errors. Thus, the
analysis, monitoring and processing of distributed dynamic workflows in CASs’
design and operation, presented via their diagram, is an important scientific and
technical task.
With each new stage in the technology development, the complexity and
enhancement of designed products and their components grows up. New production
___________________________
Copyright © 2019 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
In: P. Sosnin, V. Maklaev, E. Sosnina (eds.): Proceedings of the IS-2019 Conference, Ulyanovsk, Russia,
24-27 September 2019, published at http://ceur-ws.org
98
mastering and corresponding release of changes leads to the increasing of information
volume. Such information can be both structured (3D models, electric schemes, etc.)
as well as unstructured (office and project documentation in DOC, XML and other
formats). Last appears at different stages of the engineering process and is stored in
separate repositories in electronic or paper form, often without attaching to a specific
project. These circumstances complicate the right data searching task. Thus, products
data organization and updating in the formal description problem exists. It is worth
pointing out that Entity-Relation (ER) data presentation model is frequently used in
the information systems of large enterprises for the formal description of the product.
Exploring the scope software and hardware computer-aided design shows that up-
to-date researchers are mostly focused on design methods and their components
improvement. The progress has been made in the field of mathematical modeling,
engineering calculations, optimized data structures and user interfaces [2-13]. The
graphics is upgraded every year, the interface becomes more complicated, and user
actions are optimized, so it allows reducing the design time. Also, attention is paid to
the process approach and the workflows description [14-18], allowing to optimize the
design process. However, methods to build design engineering organizational and
technical components ontological models are less studied. With these methods, it is
possible to systematize product data and optimize the user-defined design solutions
search. This work contributes to the systematization of product data and its
organizational and technical components, using a semantic ontology-based model,
which improves the quality of production.
2 Related works
The dynamic design processes development has become one of the latest trends in
the science of business process management (BPM). Researchers and practitioners are
improving the tools, methods and theory of flexible design processes [27-30]. The
idea of design processes agile development was transferred to BPM from software
development, where agile software development has become an established term and
method of software development. The basic principles of agile software development
are set in the Manifesto for agile software development [31]. In addition, the
Manifesto contains a large amount of practical research on flexible software
development [32].
[33] provides a basic definition of the dynamic workflow in the CAS design as a
flow of design work adapted to changes in the environment.
Control, analysis, synthesis, transformation and interpretation of design workflows
are engaged in scientific schools of HSE, MSTU STANKIN, N. Bauman MSTU, SPb
Department of Steklov Mathematical Institute of RAS, Computational Mathematics
and Cybernetics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Institute for System
Programming of RAS (Russia), Carnegie Mellon (USA), VERIMAG laboratory
(France), as well as scientists like Afanasiev A. N., Karpov Yu., Sosnin P. I., Lifshitz
J. M., Yarushkina N. G., Kalyanov G. N., Konev B. Yu., Shalyto A. A., Savenkov K.
O., Kulyamin V. V., Okhotin A. S., Mikheev A. G. (Russia), as well as Neda
99
Saeedloei, Gopal Gupta, Clarke E. M., Booch G. (USA), Yuan Wang, Yushun Fan
(China), Van der Aalst.
Gavrilova [20], Zagorulko [21], Soloviev [22], Khoroshevsky [23], Guber [24],
Ushold [25] made a significant contribution to the subject-oriented knowledge
organization methods and models development. W3C [26] has developed and
approved standards for advanced XML language, XMI for metadata exchange and
SPARQL language for describing queries for ontological storage in the field of
Semantic Web, which unify the process of designing and developing complex
automated technical systems, intensively using knowledge in the syntactic and
semantic data processing procedures.
3 Structure and functional model of complex technical systems
design workflow
The complex technical products design is a complex workflow of various
specialists of the design bureau (DB). Each specialists group performs part of the
product design work, going through the implementation chain of a variety of the
business process tasks design preparation. Each task can be performed using a large
amount of specialized computer-aided design (CAD) systems, so the complex
technical product design documentation (DD) is a set of design solutions of
independent CAD, which must be collected in a single design solutions database.
Product data management (PDM) system, as a rule, acts as a unified design solutions
information base. The complex technical product design process is presented in the
Figure 1 in the form of conceptual model.
Each workflow task in the conceptual model is an embedded implementation
procedure, which involves not only the subdivisions of the design bureau, but also the
various departments of the enterprise participating in the coordination process. The
result of each nested procedure is an agreed electronic document (ED) in text format
or in the CAD specialized format. In some cases, for example, in the “Technical task
development (TT)” task, the execution result is presented as a created PDM system
object, in which necessary attributes are filled. The same technical task in paper form
is generated from the system as a report. It should be noted that the design
documentation and information about the product design in the PDM-system does not
fall once, but appears as the design at each stage of the complex technical product
design workflow. Ontology-based product presentation semantic model development
One of the promising areas of the product formal description is the ontology-based
semantic model design of the engineering design components. The main purpose of
such model is to systematize data about a product, create a conceptual diagram of a
product in the ontology form [19]. The article proposes a method to form a semantic
model using integration with CAD systems. Significant differences of the semantic
model-based ontology from the relational model are presented in the following
aspects:
1. The ontological model transmits the product data to the pragmatist.
2. The subject area semantics is presented in a visual form (graph).
100
3. ER-diagrams are used in entities selection (concepts).
4. Relationships between entities (concepts) and their attributes (properties) are
revealed with ER-diagrams.
The ontology-based structural design organizational and technical components
semantic model includes a structure for describing information and rules for its
interaction. Conceptual diagram of product representation using an ontology-based
semantic model is presented in Figure 2.
Each designed product is represented in the semantic model as a “DAC” concept,
denoting a detail or assembly component (DAC) and having properties: type, class,
designation, name, state. It should be noted that the product is a complex
organizational structure, which has several hierarchical levels of nesting, represented
in the form of a tree structure, therefore, the composition of the product is presented
as a set of concepts “DAC”, having a reflexive relationship “Consists of ...”. The
“DAC” concept is connected with the “Documentation” one by the “Contains”
relationship. Each “DAC” concept, as a rule, contains several “Documentation”
concepts. The “Documentation” concept has properties: DD type, state, approval
signatures. Since any product and its components are developed on the basis of a
technical task (TT), the “Technical task” component is introduced into the semantic
model, which is associated with the “DAC” and “Documentation” concepts by the
“Based” relationship. The “Technical task” concept has the following properties:
customer, work description, execution period, state. Within the developed technical
specification framework, the technical requirements for the designed product are
defined, which in the semantic model are represented by the “Technical
requirements” concept with the properties: requirement type and value. According to
the design process results based on the technical task and technical requirements set in
it, the “DAC” concept has technical characteristics presented in the semantic model as
the “Specifications” concept, which has properties: specifications type, value,
measure unit. The “Technical task”, “Documentation” concepts have a direct
developer, which is introduced into the semantic model as the “Developer” concept
and has the properties: developer full name, position, division, design date. The
complex technical product design cannot be accomplished without detailed
elaboration of composite components and drawing up design work schedules. The
introduced “Operating schedule” concept is associated with the “DAC” one and
allows to create the entire works list decomposition. The “Operating schedule”
concept contains the properties: work description, work executor, the planned work
commencement date, the planned work completion date. The “Operating schedule”
concept is also associated with the “Developer” one.
Project management system
Issuance of tasks, Issuance of tasks,
control deadlines
Issuance of tasks, control deadlines
control deadlines Issuance of
Issuance of tasks, tasks,
control deadlines control deadlines Approval procedure, Accountin
Issuance of tasks, timing control g in the
control deadlines
Determination technical
Developm Development Coordination
of Scheduling Design Approval document
ent of TT of draft design
requirements ation
Kompas-3D
departme
Altium
Kompas-3D nt
Designer Analog Altium Designer Workflow
E3
Search
Engineering Loodsman
calculations
Engineering Archive
calculations
Loodsman
Kompas-3D Preliminary
Kompas-3D
Altium Designer design PLM
Altium Designer
Ansys Ansys
MathLab MathLab
Technical
Calculations Calculations ECD
requirements ETT
Schedule
Model Model
Analysis Parameters
Ontological base of
PLM system design projects
Ontology
101
Data formation Data
Figure 1. Design workflows for creating complex technical systems in manufacturing
102
4 The library of workflows
The autohor’s ontology-based method is presented in Figure 3. The semantic
model formation takes place using the data extraction method. It is presented in
different formats from documents to PDM system objects. The semantic model
formation is launched at each stage of the design process through a project
management system and requires effective algorithms.
The initial task of the workflow for designing a complex technical product is
“Determining Requirements”, within which technical requirements for the entire
product as a whole are defined. At this stage, the document containing technical
requirements appears in the PDM system, mostly in text format. After that the product
semantic model forming mechanism is launched, during which the “DAC” and
“Technical requirement” concepts are created using the data extraction method.
Filling in the properties of the “Technical Requirement” concept occurs by selecting
the “Type of Requirement” and “Value” properties from the document text.
According to the general product requirements, a technical task for the development
of a draft design or an engineering documentation is being developed, which is
carried out in the next stage of product design. The technical task in PLM-system is
represented as the object with the same name, which has the following attributes:
“Customer”, “Work Assignment”, “Technical Requirements”, “Contractor
Subdivision”, “Design Date”. The data extraction method allows to select several
concepts from the PLM-system object:
• “Technical Task” concept, with the filling of properties: execution period,
work description, customer, state.
• “Developer” concept, which has the properties of a division, position, full
name, design date.
• “Technical Requirement” concept with the filling of the corresponding
properties.
The result of the “Draft design development” or “Engineering documentation
design” task is a design documentation released, which is represented in the PLM
system as “Document” object with attached project files. The data extraction method
highlights the concepts:
• “Document” concept in which the properties are filled: document type, state
and approval signatures.
• “Specifications” concept is obtained from document files, for example, 3D-
models, with selection of the “Type of specifications” property and its value in a
certain measure unit.
• “Developer” concept as described earlier.
103
It has
Specifica
tions
Techni
cal
requirem
ent
Works Designer
Belongs
DAС
Opera
ting
schedule
Defines
Docume
ntation
technical
task
Figure 2. Conceptual diagram of product presentation using ontology-based semantic model
The “Engineering Calculations” stage execution leads to a number of documents
development containing calculated values reflecting the DACs characteristics. Using
calculations, the main characteristics of the designed product are highlighted, which
are compared with the “Technical Requirements” for compliance. The result is a
message to the user about the (non-)compliance of the developed DD with the stated
requirements, indicating the difference in deviation. Completion of the “Draft design
development” stage leads to the start of work on the decomposition of the product
into its component parts, planning the stages and development terms. As a result, the
“Operating schedule” concept is filled out with the “Work Description”, “Planned
start date”, “Planned completion date” properties and the work performer is recorded
with the filling the corresponding property. The development timing specified in the
work schedule is affected by the presence or absence of the product component parts
analogues. For this purpose, the design solutions ontological base is applied for
carrying out such an analysis.
104
Figure 3. Semantic model formation diagram
105
7 Conclusion
In this paper, authors investigated the design workflow of complex technical
products and developed noval method to create a database of these workflows. To
systematize data about the product and its organizational and technical components,
an ontolodgy-based product representation semantic model is presented. Authors have
offered method allowing structural-parametric analysis of products in the PLM-
system according to the necessary requirements. The product data extraction method
from the diagram ER-model of the PLM-system to form the design solutions
ontological database is developed, which will significantly reduce the time to search
for ready-made similar solutions. A verification method of the developed product for
compliance with the requirements is proposed, which allows to analyze the product
semantic model and improves quality of the designed products by eliminating errors
in the early design stages. Efficiency is confirmed by the relevant experiments, and
authors revealed the superiority in comparison with the existing PLM-systems. The
future direction is ontology-based semantic model creation of production design
technological preparation that will allow to understand an essence of business
processes of the enterprises and will provide decisions reuse.
Acknowledgment
The reported study was funded by RFBR according to the research project № 17-
07-01417. The reported research was funded by Russian Foundation for Basic
Research and the government of the region of the Russian Federation, grant № 18-47-
730032. The research is supported by a grant from the Ministry of Education and
Science of the Russian Federation, project No. 2.1615.2017/4.6.
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