The engineering community faces multiple challenges as it moves toward a future that will consist of virtual reality, model-based enterprises, and a heavy reliance on simulation for requirements development, design, manufacturing, assembly, and training for future products. The focus on model-based activities (e.g. design, systems engineering, manufacturing) is seen as a way to better reuse knowledge, ensure higher quality, and reduce costs through virtual design and testing. However, the combination of discipline-focused decomposition, the functional to physical progression, proprietary data formats, and poor communication between disciplines due to different language and contexts leads to longer development times, increased rework, and a failure in product realization. Raytheon has been researching aspects of this future, targeted at shortening the product development lifecycle by an order of magnitude. One such recent Raytheon-funded study has indicated that a potentially more complete approach might be to address the problem from an information sciences perspective and the adoption of "product'' models as the primary representation. In particular, the development of a workable rapid engineering environment will require an information architecture-leveraging product ontology designed specifically for this type of approach.
