CPM2: A core model for product data

The initial core product model (CPM), developed at NIST for the support of in-house research projects, has been extended to create CPM2, intended to support a broad range of information relevant to product lifecycle management. CPM2 is a generic, abstract model with generic semantics. CPM2 gives equal status to three aspects of a product or artifact: its function, its form, and its behavior. Thus, CPM2 can support functional reasoning about a product in the conceptual stages of design, the recording and the modeling of its behavior in the postdesign stages as well as the "traditional" design phases. Three levels of CPM2 models, denoted as the conceptual, intermediate, and implementation models, are described. Extensions of the initial CPM are briefly presented. The facilities in CPM2 for building experimental intermediate systems are demonstrated and a short illustrative example is given. The full practical evaluation of CPM2 will require the development and use of implementation models.