Intelligent Electronic Component Catalogues for Engineering and Manufacturing

We present in this paper the concept of intelligent electronic catalogue for engineering and manufacturing as it results from the ESPRIT PLUS project and from the PLib standard (officially ISO 13584, Parts Library). We introduce the model of a semantic data dictionary that was developed together with IEC to identify and to define the different concepts involved in a particular catalogue or product standard (e.g., component class, technical property), Then we present the mechanisms defined in PLib to capture the three kinds of knowledge about components : the structural, descriptive and procedural knowledge. We show how this knowledge may be used, on the catalogue user side, to perform the different engineering tasks about component usage: selection, evaluation and representation. We finally present the tools developed in PLUS for intelligent electronic catalogue usage and supply, and we discuss the role of PLib compliant component repositories in the information infrastructure of the virtual enterprises.