Semantic integration of product data models for the verification of product requirements

Along the product development process concurrent engineering teams repeatedly create new product data and exchange it among each other as a logical input for subsequent engineering activities. Almost every piece of product data logically builds on another. However, usually product data is scattered over different, domain-specific IT systems and this physical separation is a challenge for product developers and IT experts. Since the management of logical interrelations between distributed product data is costly, such semantic links are often not modelled explicitly. Hence, engineers need to know these interrelations implicitly in order to ensure logical consistency of the overall product model. In this paper an approach for efficient semantic data integration and its application to an exemplary use case, knowledge-based test planning, is presented. It is supported by an integration framework that uses ontologies for interlinking different systems of virtual product creation. The paper also presents the findings of a case study on the process of defining a mapping between a requirements ontology and a domain-specific data exchange format, the Requirements Interchange Format (ReqIF).