A theoretical framework for product relationships description over space and time in integrated design

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a novel qualitative description theory in the context of integrated design, which here incorporates assembly sequence planning in the early product design stages (also called assembly oriented design – AOD). Based on a literature review of current AOD approaches, product models and mereotopology-based theories, the authors introduce a promising mereotopological theory which enables the formal product relationships description in integrated design by introducing an emerging framework, four-dimensionalism (i.e. perdurantism in philosophy). The proposed efforts aim at providing a concrete basis for describing the evolution of spatial entities (i.e. product parts) an…