Knowledge-based decision support for machine component design: A case study

• Published in: Expert systems with applications 2022-01, Vol.187, p.115869, Article 115869
• Main Authors: Aerts, Bram, Deryck, Marjolein, Vennekens, Joost
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Constraint-based reasoning; Decision support systems; Deterministic modelling; DMN; Engineers; Interactive configuration; Product design
• ISSN: 0957-4174; 1873-6793
• DOI: 10.1016/j.eswa.2021.115869

This paper describes research conducted during a project with a multinational company that focuses on product design. The project tackles two different goals: providing sales staff with a tool that allows them to autonomously handle routine requests, and providing the company’s engineers with a decision support system to help them design products for more challenging application areas. For the first goal, we make use of a deterministic decision process, represented in the recent Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard. For the second goal, we propose a constraint-based method. There, we use the IDP system to provide a number of interactive functionalities based on a logical representation of the relevant constraints. To ensure that the system is maintainable, we want the constraints to be updated by the engineers themselves. The IDP language is not ideal for this. Instead, we propose the cDMN notation, which extends the user-friendly DMN to constraints. •The DMN notation efficiently represents decision knowledge in limited scope.•To fully support experts, constraint based modelling and reasoning is necessary.•Multiple inferences can be applied to the same knowledge base using a graphical tool.•We introduce a generic notation to ensure readability of constraint-based models.