Semantic Annotation Model Definition for Systems Interoperability

ISBN 978-3-642-25125-2International audienceSemantic annotation is one of the useful solutions to enrich target's (systems, models, meta-models, etc.) information. There are some papers which use semantic enrichment for different purposes (integration, composition, sharing and reuse, etc.) in several domains, but none of them provides a complete process of how to use semantic annotations. This paper identifies three main components of semantic annotation, proposes for it a formal definition and presents a survey of current semantic annotation methods. At the end, we present a simple case study to explain how our semantic annotation proposition can be applied.The survey presented in this paper will be the basis of our future research on models, semantics and architecture for enterprises systems interoperability during the product lifecycle

Types of partly configurable products in high-variety, low-volume context

Research on partly configurable products is emerging. Key concepts of these types of products have been scarcely synthetized, as definitions of partly configurable products in high-variety, low-volume industrial context are limited. These products incorporate modular and integral designs, which calls for an overview on the relations of key concepts defining them. The problem is approached through an exploratory literature review, which allowed an overview of the key concepts over product modularity and partly configurable products. Those were synthetized further define partly configurable products. As a result, four types of partly configurable products are given. This review supports vantage over the key concepts and their relations for reuse with partly configurable products in academia. For practitioners the presented attributes and given examples support in understanding of concepts and their relations with partly configurable products.Peer reviewe

Reference ontologies for interoperability across multiple assembly systems

The role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is crucial for future manufacturing organisations in order to support effective collaboration and information sharing. However, the contemporary ICT-based systems lack the required ability to adequately support interoperability across multiple domain systems. The capability of such ICT-based systems to interoperate is impeded by the semantic conflicts arising from loosely defined meanings and intents of the participating system concepts. The aim of this paper is to investigate the interoperability of assembly systems at multiple levels of concept specialisations using the concept of a formal reference ontology. Formal ontologies are providing a promising way to computationally capture the domain meanings which can subsequently provide a base to support interoperability across multiple systems and in our case multiple assembly systems. This paper takes the example of manufacturing bill of materials concept and three different domain-specific interpretations to explore and demonstrate the potential of formal reference ontologies to support interoperability

Towards a formal manufacturing reference ontology

Due to the advancement in the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), manufacturing industry and its many domains employ a wide range of different ICT tools. To be competitive, industries need to communicate effectively within and across their many system domains. This communication is hindered by the diversity in the semantics of concepts and information structures of these different domain systems. Whilst international standards provide an effective route to information sharing within narrowly specified domains, they are themselves not interoperable across the wide range of application domains needed to support manufacturing industry due to the inconsistency of concept semantics. Formal ontologies have shown promise in removing interpretation problems by computationally capturing the semantics of concepts, ensuring their consistency and thus providing a verifiable and shared understanding across multiple domains. The research work reported in this paper contributes to the development of formal reference ontology for manufacturing, which is envisaged as a key component in future interoperable manufacturing systems. A set of core manufacturing concepts are identified and their semantics have been captured in formal logic based on exploiting and extending existing standards definitions, where possible combined with an industrial investigation of the concepts required. A successful experimental investigation has been conducted to verify the application of the ontology based on the interaction between concepts in the design and manufacturing domains of an aerospace component

Reference ontologies for interoperability across multiple assembly systems

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Production Research on 28 Sep 2015, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2015.1087654The role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is crucial for future manufacturing organisations in order to support effective collaboration and information sharing. However, the contemporary ICT-based systems lack the required ability to adequately support interoperability across multiple domain systems. The capability of such ICT-based systems to interoperate is impeded by the semantic conflicts arising from loosely defined meanings and intents of the participating system concepts. The aim of this paper is to investigate the interoperability of assembly systems at multiple levels of concept specialisations using the concept of a formal reference ontology. Formal ontologies are providing a promising way to computationally capture the domain meanings which can subsequently provide a base to support interoperability across multiple systems and in our case multiple assembly systems. This paper takes the example of manufacturing bill of materials concept and three different domain-specific interpretations to explore and demonstrate the potential of formal reference ontologies to support interoperability

Explicitating semantics in Enterprise Information Systems Models

140 pages Report for the Post-Doctorate diploma of the Université Henri Poincaré Supervisors: Hervé Panetto and Alexis AubryInteroperability can be defined as the ability of two or more systems to share, to understand and to consume information (IEEE, 1990). The work (Chen et al., 2006) in the INTEROP NoE project has identified three different levels of barriers for interoperability: technical, conceptual and organisational. Our research focuses on the conceptual level of interoperability, namely the ability to understand the exchanged information. Information may be defined as data linked to knowledge about this data. This research memory will show the results obtained during the Post Doc study referring to the published works. It deals with a first phase from our general research work that focuses on the study of the semantic loss that appears in the exchange of information about business concepts. In order to quantify the semantic gap between interoperating ISs, their semantics needs to be enacted and structured by enriching, normalising and analysing their conceptual models. We propose a conceptualisation approach for explicitation of the finest-grained semantics, embedded into conceptual models in order to facilitate the semantic matching between two different information systems that have to interoperate. The structure of the document represents the different steps and the research domain on which the study focused

Tools for enterprises collaboration in virtual enterprises

Virtual Enterprise (VE) is an organizational collaboration concept which provides a competitive edge in the globalized business environment. The life cycle of a VE consists of four stages i.e. opportunity identification (Pre-Creation), partner selection (Creation), operation and dissolution. The success of VEs depends upon the efficient execution of their VE-lifecycles along with knowledge enhancement for the partner enterprises to facilitate the future formation of efficient VEs. This research aims to study the different issues which occur in the VE lifecycle and provides a platform for the formation of high performance enterprises and VEs. In the pre-creation stage, enterprises look for suitable partners to create their VE and to exploit a market opportunity. This phase requires explicit and implicit information extraction from enterprise data bases (ECOS-ontology) for the identification of suitable partners. A description logic (DL) based query system is developed to extract explicit and implicit information and to identify potential partners for the creation of the VE. In the creation phase, the identified partners are analysed using different risks paradigms and a cooperative game theoretic approach is used to develop a revenue sharing mechanism based on enterprises inputs and risk minimization for optimal partner selection. In the operation phases, interoperability remains a key issue for seamless transfer of knowledge information and data. DL-based ontology mapping is applied in this research to provide interoperability in the VE between enterprises with different domains of expertise. In the dissolution stage, knowledge acquired in the VE lifecycle needs to be disseminated among the enterprises to enhance their competitiveness. A DL-based ontology merging approach is provided to accommodate new knowledge with existing data bases with logical consistency. Finally, the proposed methodologies are validated using the case study. The results obtained in the case study illustrate the applicability and effectiveness of proposed methodologies in each stage of the VE life cycle

A knowledge based approach to integration of products, processes and reconfigurable automation resources

The success of next generation automotive companies will depend upon their ability to adapt to ever changing market trends thus becoming highly responsive. In the automotive sector, the assembly line design and reconfiguration is an especially critical and extremely complex job. The current research addresses some of the aspects of this activity under the umbrella of a larger ongoing research project called Business Driven Automation (BDA) project. The BDA project aims to carry out complete virtual 3D modeling-based verifications of the assembly line for new or revised products in contrast to the prevalent practice of manual evaluation of effects of product change on physical resources. [Continues.