Developing manufacturing ontologies for knowledge reuse in distributed manufacturing environment

• Published in: International journal of production research Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 343 - 359
• Main Authors: Lin, L.F., Zhang, W.Y., Lou, Y.C., Chu, C.Y., Cai, M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Taylor & Francis Group 15.01.2011; Taylor & Francis; Taylor & Francis LLC
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Artificial intelligence; Communities; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Construction; distributed manufacturing; Exact sciences and technology; Information sharing; Information systems. Data bases; Knowledge; Knowledge acquisition; knowledge reuse; Manufacturing; manufacturing ontology; Memory organisation. Data processing; Modelling; Ontology; Operations research; OWL (telescope); Programming languages; Reuse; Semantic Web; Semantics; Software; Software engineering; Speech and sound recognition and synthesis. Linguistics; Studies; Unified Modeling Language; Unified Modeling Language (UML); Web Ontology Language (OWL); Knowledge engineering; Ontology; Expert system; Web service; knowledge reuse; Virtual community; Modeling; Semantic web; manufacturing ontology; Semantics; Object oriented; World wide web; Extended enterprise; Unified modelling language; Web Ontology Language (OWL); distributed manufacturing; Modelling language; Knowledge acquisition; Knowledge representation; Reuse; Social network; Knowledge base; Unified Modeling Language (UML); Knowledge transfer; Industrialization; Object constraint language; Internet; Expertise; Software engineering
• ISSN: 0020-7543; 1366-588X
• DOI: 10.1080/00207540903349021

The use of ontologies for knowledge sharing and distributed collaboration has been widely recognised in the knowledge modelling community, but the lack of a systematic and constructive methodology for developing manufacturing ontologies has impeded their wide usage for knowledge reuse in distributed manufacturing environments. This paper presents a constructive, two-level knowledge modelling approach to systematically develop manufacturing ontologies using both software engineering and Semantic Web paradigms. The UML/OCL (Unified Modeling Language/Object Constraint Language)-based object modelling is used first to serve as a graphical and structured basis for conceptual communication between domain experts and knowledge engineers. The OWL/SWRL (Web Ontology Language/Semantic Web Rule Language)-based ontology modelling then extends the UML/OCL-based object models with added semantics using a progressive, semantics-oriented knowledge acquisition method. An illustrative example for manufacturing ontology development in the manufacturing industry for producing electronic connectors is used to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed approach.