Ontologies to Support the Management of New Product Development in the Chemical Process Industries

The effective management of the new product development (NPD) process is essential for the survival of a business in today’s marketplace. NPD typically involves a number of disciplines. It also takes place in a context of competing requirements and influences—e.g. short time-to-market vs. high quality of product—which have led to the introduction of concurrent and collaborative engineering techniques [7]. Because of its interdisciplinary nature and these competing influences, NPD processes within a business are difficult to manage and co-ordinate. Research suggests that poor management of the process—such as lack of communication and inappropriate cutting of corners—contributes to many failures of new products [2]. Workflow management systems are widely used for the streamlined management of “administrative” processes, but current systems are unable to cope with the more dynamic situations encountered in ad-hoc and collaborative processes [1]. It is this class of dynamic, collaborative processes which encompasses most engineering activities, and hence there is increasing interest in the use of knowledge-based techniques to provide more flexible process management support in such areas [4].