Semantic representation of product requirements for true product knowledge management

To achieve true product requirements knowledge management and improving the level of automation in other related knowledge-intensive tasks, we need a common understanding of product requirements that is shared by humans and computers. This suggests the use of a knowledge representation paradigm that allows the semantic representation of product requirements information. This paper presents an outline of a knowledge representation system (KRS) for this wide sort of technical knowledge. This KRS is based upon the same representational means used for the semantic representation of natural language expressions, although the knowledge representation framework (KRF) provided to support meaning representation is one adapted to the domain of product requirements. The KRF takes into account the general structure of product requirements and provides a collection of representational means suitable for capturing the meaning of these information units. We also report on how the KRS is being implemented and on its intended use for creating, disseminating and processing product requirements knowledge bases.