A COST ESTIMATION SYSTEM FOR MANUFACTURING PRODUCT USING ONTOLOGY AND EXEPERT SYSTEM

The capability to estimate accurately the internal costs of a product in the different stages of the development as well as external cost at the quote step is of a strategic importance to a company. The traditional accounting methods as well as the estimation tools have shown their limits to provide a stringent unified tool in both the accounting and the technical sides. A Method of estimation based on the Cost Entity was born recently in order to overcome the loopholes of the usual methods. This method allows from a more or less complete description of the product to link the manufacturing processes (Manufacturing Entities) with the consumption of the associated resources (Cost Entities). The highly cognitive character of such an approach suits the use of a knowledge formalization tool, like ontology. In fact, besides being a simple referencing tool for objects and concepts, the ontologies will allow to capitalize, formalize and structure the concrete knowledge (product description, process…) as well as the abstract one (calculus process, expert rules…) which are both required for cost estimations. The treatment of this knowledge to obtain cost estimation will be done by an independent expert system.