Process innovation plays a vital role in the manufacture realization of increasingly complex new products, especially in the context of sustainable development and cleaner production. Knowledge-based innovation design can inspire designers’ creative thinking; however, the existing scattered knowledge has not yet been properly captured and organized according to Computer-Aided Process Innovation (CAPI). Therefore, this paper proposes an integrated approach to tackle this non-trivial issue. By analyzing the design process of CAPI and technical features of open innovation, a novel holistic paradigm of process innovation knowledge capture based on collective intelligence (PIKC-CI) is constructed from the perspective of the knowledge life cycle. Then, a multi-source innovation knowledge fusion algorithm based on semantic elements reconfiguration is applied to form new public knowledge. To ensure the credibility and orderliness of innovation knowledge refinement, a collaborative editing strategy based on knowledge lock and knowledge–social trust degree is explored. Finally, a knowledge management system MPI-OKCS integrating the proposed techniques is implemented into the pre-built CAPI general platform, and a welding process innovation example is provided to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed approach. It is expected that our work would lay the foundation for the future knowledge-inspired CAPI and smart process planning.

Assembly precision analysis (APA) plays an important role in the whole life cycle of complex products design, manufacturing, assembly and even remanufacturing. Assembly precision information model (APIM) is usually complex since it is affected by many factors, such as design tolerance of parts, assembly process scheme, assembly sequence planning and tolerance of positioning tooling, etc. Therefore, it is of practical significance for APA to reasonably reduce the workload of assembly precision information (API) modeling. A semantic simplification approach for APIM is proposed in this paper, which mainly takes semantic relations between APIM and design tolerance of parts into consideration. Initially, ontology of structure knowledge of APIM is constructed according to a tolerance standard. Furthermore, simplification rules are respectively established by considering two semantic relations: one semantic relation between deviation change direction and deviation accumulation direction and the other semantic relation among multiple geometric characteristics on the same geometric feature. Additionally, by utilizing ontology reasoning function, the simplified semantic APIM is generated. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by a practical example of engine front auxiliary drive equipment. It is expected that our work would lay the foundation for APA of complex products based on actual measured data.

Press-braking bending is widely applied in the manufacture of aircraft integral panels because of the advantages of strong adaptability to different contours, simplicity of bending tools, short manufacturing time and low process cost. However, a simulation of bending process requires long-time calculation and consumes extensive computational resources. Considering the factors that the original model (ORM) of an integral panel is large and the press-braking bending is used only for the local area of integral panels with heavy thickness in practice, an equivalent calculation method for press-braking bending analysis of integral panels is proposed. The local bending area of an integral panel is simplified to a model of plate in this method. An exponential strengthening model is used to derive the equations of stress, strain and forming radius of the ORM and its simplified model (SPM). Meanwhile, the equivalent parameters of the SPM are determined and deduced based on three principles: that the material begin to be yielded simultaneously, the ultimate stress of the ORM is the same as that of the SPM at the same punch displacement, and the forming radii of neutral surfaces of the ORM and the SPM are identical after springback. The distribution of the stress and strain determined by finite element (FE) simulations are compared, and the FE simulations indicate that the contour curve of the SPM is in fairly good agreement with the profile of the ORM under the same bending process parameters, and the maximum difference is 13.17%. The computational efficiency is increased by more than 48%. Therefore, the proposed approach is quite suitable for industrial applications to improve the bending quality and efficiency of integral panels.