A dynamic information schema for supporting product lifecycle management

The globalization of competition and changing customer requirements are the emerging phenomenon of today's manufacturing environment. Nowadays, manufacturers need useful information prior to making important decisions based on their experience and knowledge. However, the lack of seamless data transformation between database and knowledge based system hinders design practitioners from responding rapidly to the changes in the complex and dynamic product development environment. This paper proposes a dynamic product information schema which is characterized by its ability to provide designers with a product data exchange standard, thus, enhancing the responsiveness of product development. The approach is based on the modification of the XML standard which is assimilated with object technology to form a cross-platform protocol that enables enterprises to update their data constantly. In particular, data from the traditional relational database model can be transformed to a format which is acceptable in a knowledge base system. To validate the feasibility of the proposed schema, a trial run has been conducted in a local company based on the suggested approach.