Innovative Product Design using Metaontology with Semantic TRIZ

In the manufacturing industry, supply chain management is playing an important role in providing profit to the enterprise. Information that is useful in improving existing products and development of new products can be obtained from databases and ontology. The theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) supports designers of innovative product design by searching a knowledge base. The existing TRIZ ontology supports innovative design of specific products (Flashlight) for a TRIZ ontology. The research reported in this paper aims at developing a metaontology for innovative product design that can be applied to multiple products in different domain areas. The authors applied the semantic TRIZ to a product (Smart Fan) as an interim stage toward a metaontology that can manage general products and other concepts. Modeling real-world (Smart Pen and Smart Machine) ontologies is undertaken as an evaluation of the metaontology. This may open up new possibilities to innovative product designs.