Ontological Framework for Systems Engineering Relationship Management

Resolve Bottlenecks,
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions

Solution Overview

Problem

Systems engineering faces challenges in managing multi-dimensional relationships between various technological domains, leading to errors, re-design, and requirement failures due to latent and undocumented relationships.

Innovation Solution

The use of an ontological framework combined with a language model to process engineering information, determine entity relationships, and generate outputs such as digital twins and MBSE diagrams, thereby documenting and validating design components and their relationships.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If engineers manually coordinate design objectives and regulations across multiple technological domains, then engineering requirements can be documented, but the complexity and volume of requirements documentation increases dramatically (thousands or millions of requirements)

Engineering Contradiction:

Improverequirements accuracyVSAvoidrequirements documentation complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces an ontological framework as an intermediary layer between engineering requirements and their implementation. This framework provides a standardized structure for representing entities, attributes, and relationships across multiple domains, reducing the complexity of coordinating design objectives and regulations while maintaining requirements accuracy.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The system transforms unstructured engineering requirements into structured data by extracting entities, attributes, and relationships. This parameter transformation converts the complexity of thousands of discrete requirements into a manageable ontological representation, reducing documentation complexity while preserving reliability.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

2Productivity

If latent relationships between design, prototyping, testing, and validation components are not documented, then engineering processes can proceed quickly, but errors and requirement failures increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveengineering process speedVSAvoiderror reduction

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary extraction and documentation of latent relationships between engineering components during the requirements analysis phase. By identifying and recording these relationships in advance using the ontological framework, the system enables faster subsequent processing while reducing errors, as the relationships are already documented and validated.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system uses feedback mechanisms to continuously validate and update the ontological representation of engineering relationships. By monitoring and verifying relationships between design, prototyping, testing, and validation components, the system maintains high reliability while enabling efficient engineering processes through automated relationship validation.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

3Reliability

If comprehensive relationship documentation is created to avoid errors and requirement failures, then reliability improves, but the time and resources required for systems engineering increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improverequirement failure preventionVSAvoidengineering coordination time

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The patent replaces manual mechanical processes of relationship documentation with automated computational methods. The system automatically extracts entities, attributes, and relationships from engineering requirements using natural language processing and validates them against the ontological framework, significantly reducing the time and resources required while maintaining comprehensive relationship documentation for reliability.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #28Mechanics substitution (Replace mechanical system)

4Adaptability or versatility

If manual processing of engineering requirements is used, then flexibility in handling diverse requirements is maintained, but productivity and efficiency decrease

Engineering Contradiction:

Improverequirements handling flexibilityVSAvoidsystems engineering efficiency

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The ontological framework provides a universal structure that can represent diverse engineering requirements across multiple technological domains. This multi-functional framework handles various types of entities and relationships through a common representation scheme, maintaining adaptability while enabling automated processing that significantly improves productivity and efficiency.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

Data Source

PatentUS20250190478A1System and Methods For Systems Engineering

Publication Date: 2025.06.12 PREWITT RIDGE INC

AI summary

Disclosed are methods, systems and non-transitory computer readable memory for systems engineering. For instance, a method may include: receiving, via an input graphical user interface or one or more data connectors, engineering information, wherein the engineering information includes data for a plurality of entities stored on a datastore; processing, using a language model, the engineering information to output entity information, wherein the entity information includes one or more data attributes of a first entity of the plurality of entities; querying an ontological framework using the entity information, wherein querying the ontological framework determines a relationship between the first entity and a second entity of the plurality of entities; and generating an output based, at least in part, on the relationship between the first entity and the second entity.