Knowledge organisation of product design blackboard systems via graph decomposition

Knowledge organisation plays an important role in building a knowledge-based product design blackboard system. Well-organised knowledge sources will facilitate the effectiveness and efficiency of communication and data exchange in a blackboard system. In a previous investigation, an approach for constructing blackboard systems for product design using a non-directed graph decomposition algorithm was proposed. In this paper, the relationship between graph decomposition and the resultant blackboard system is further studied. A case study of a number of hypothetical blackboard systems that comprise different knowledge organisations is provided. q 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.