Towards a Unified Description of Product Related Processes

Nowadays it can already be seen clearly that in order to increase the effectiveness of computer support in development and production of durable industrial products or artifacts, three problems still need to be solved: (a) integration of aspect models used in artifact development, (b) integration of the aspect models used in process planning and process representations, (c) integration of (a) and (b).This seems to be difficult, since different application fields, representation techniques and information contents have to be combined. It means that instead of the pure artifact and process models, we have to develop artifact process models (AP models). This paper focuses on the integration of four kinds of typical lifecycle processes: (1) design or mental creation processes, (2) producing or physical creation processes, (3) operation processes or internal behavioral processes and (4) use processes or external behavioral processes. The link between the different process aspects is explored by idealizing the process, as a preparation for a mathematical definition of AP models in further research. The set based general formalization presented here does include references to the artifact, but not to the artifact model yet.