US 2019/0163738 A1 · Development Factory

Abstract

Traditionally, development and manufacturing engages multiple team into multiple step processes. The idea is usually initiated by a subject matter expert (SME), then more details are added by business analysts and developers who translate the idea into technology. In each step of translation, such as system architecture, computer code development, or detailing parts for a new transportation mechanism, the next level of details is added by next level teams, who extensively interact with computers searching for relevant information. This work is often supported by business process modeling systems. The invention accelerates development and manufacturing processes by including conversational semantic support systems (CSSS) as active participants and partners of a SME in the process. CSSS includes a conversational initiator with a set of initial scripts to prompt a SME to expand the initial idea with more details. CSSS receives an initial request from a SME, provides a semantic mapping from business goals to existing business tasks, scripted rules and scenarios, automatically moving to the next step of details, when available. The interesting things start when data is not available. At this point the system initiates a set of conversations with other CSSS available on the net and closely related to the subject matter. If data are not found, a program initiates a search over public and private data sources, over the Internet and available Data Clouds. The last resort is a conversation with a set of SME connected to the net. Retrieved and approved by a SME data is semantically classified and registered while constantly increasing the knowledge of a system and its efficiency. Development factory includes modeling and manufacturing facilities with 3-D printers and material-feeders controlled by the system with conversational semantic support providing accelerated process for developing products and services for medical, military and transportation applications.

Claims14

Dependent claims

A Development Factory for accelerated development and manufacturing products and services by subject matter experts, later called SME;

connected via the network with a plurality of the conversational semantic support systems, later called CSSS, and manufacturing components including but not limited to:
material feeder providing selected materials;
3-D Printers;
assembly system;
where CSSS, specialized in different knowledge domains, comprising:
a conversation initiator system, for initiation conversational communications with plurality CSSS and SME to retrieve information describing the development and manufacturing goals and to mapping development and manufacturing goals to existing services and initiating detailing of development and manufacturing goals into business scenarios and manufacturing steps and further to standard-based technological descriptions for the steps, which are not found by the mapping system;
a semantic mapping system, which is connected to the conversation initiator system, for mapping natural language based information to the standard protocols, starting from business scenarios and manufacturing steps descriptions and further to standard-based technological descriptions;
a business rules and scenarios system, which is connected to the conversation initiator system and the semantic mapping system, for storing the original development descriptions as business scenarios;
a manufacturing steps and technological system, which is connected to the conversation initiator system, the semantic mapping system, and the business scenarios system, for storing the business descriptions further detailed into manufacturing steps and standard-based technological descriptions;
a manufacturing steps execution system for execution manufacturing steps and technological descriptions, which is connected to the conversation initiator system, the semantic mapping system, the business scenarios system, and the manufacturing steps and technological system;
a marketing evaluation system, which is connected to the conversation initiator system and the semantic mapping system for evaluation of marketing conditions, approximation of mass production quantity and negotiation of the terms of usage and rates;

8 more elements

A Development Factory method for accelerated development and manufacturing product and services by subject matter experts, later called SME, connected via the network with a plurality of the conversational semantic support systems, later CSSS, specialized in different knowledge areas, comprising the following steps:

propagating to the network a specialization graph describing knowledge ontologies supported by CSSS;
receiving initial business goals from SME and CSSS, where initial business goals and requirements are present in natural language;
defining the main subjects and related knowledge areas and “tag” the initial business descriptions with the meta-data;
comparing the meta-data of the requirements with the specialization of a current CSSS, calculating and sending to the network the relevance index to define the level of participation in the current collaborative development and manufacturing process;
initiating conversations with the plurality of CSSS to provide semantic mapping of the business goals and requirements to business rules and scenarios, then further down to manufacturing steps and standard-based technological descriptions;
creating association graph, which is mapping information across all stages of the process;
evaluating completeness of the mapping with validation of standard-based technological descriptions against existing standards;
initiating conversational message exchange by sending request to CSSS and SME to retrieve missing information and fill in informational gaps in the process of semantic mapping;
checking if association graph, at each step of its creation, reflects components of any previously created and archived graphs;
if found, sending an archived association graph to the conversational message to confirm existing mapping;
if association records are not found, continuing the conversation by sending a specific request for missing information to other CSSS and SME;
if no information found, recommend the SME to manually fill in the informational gap in the process and converse with the SME to collect new information in the formatted semantic graph understood by a program;
so the next time the system would be able to find and use these data for automation;
checking for integrity of business rules and scenarios to reject a new rule or scenario which is in conflict with the existing rules and requesting the correction;
transforming business rules and scenarios into standard-based technological descriptions and conversing with SME for conformation and specific requests for missing information;
initiating conversations with plurality of CSSS and SME for collecting marketing conditions, approximation of mass production quantity and negotiation of the terms of usage and rates;
collecting ontology graph for the developed product and ranking the connections in the graph, calculating approximate demand and suggested terms of usage and rates based on the ranked connections and sending the results in the conversational line for corrections and negotiations;
storing a history of conversations and negotiations to dynamically re-evaluate and rank the level of specialization of CSSS and SME according to their knowledge domains
expanding initial conversational scripts with new logical branches obtained as a result of new information provided by a SME

16 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Development Factory

Life of this patent

Development Factory

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims14