Using the LEGO Analogy to Engineer, Configure, and Optimise

Do you remember playing with LEGO? Assembling little blocks into a solution that fitted requirements of your imagination. You did not make the blocks but knew their capabilities and configured them creatively. The SWOP2 project (Semantic Web-based Open engineering Platform, NMP2-CT-2005-016972) is doing much the same but with engineering and business “blocks” (parts of engineering or service products) that are parametric – so adaptable Lego blocks! SWOP is based on the new intelligentinternet - the Semantic Web. Solution approaches expressed as components, properties and rules can be stored, retrieved, applied, compared, assessed and optimised against end-user requirements automatically.

A benefit of the semantic, digitally modelled world is the ability to experiment at speed. Many problems in industry and business are simple in principle but complex and time consuming to optimise. SWOP introduces an optimisation engine based on the Genetic Algorithm (GA) approach which allows rapid analysis of numerous solutions that, en masse, map out the peaks and troughs of nearoptimal solutions. The technique is not new but it has been difficult to join it to the real world. SWOP makes a semantic connection