A manufacturing foundation ontology for product life cycle interoperability

This paper presents the idea of a proposed Manufacturing Foundation Ontology (MFO) aimed at acting as a basis for the Product Life Cycle (PLC) interoperability. MFO is aimed to have the provision for introducing interoperability not only across departments but across organization as well. The proposed idea shows the development of a MFO in several layers and various levels in those layers. The foundation ontology will act as a basis for building Interoperable knowledge bases or ‘World Models’ from a library of formally defined concepts in a heavy weight ontology. A MFO must be flexible enough to allow organizations to be able to model their own domains with the flexibility to use the terms they want. Rules and axioms governing each and every concept add rigour to the semantics of the MFO and restrict the use of concepts to facilitate interoperability with a minimum effect on flexibility to model

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

Verification of knowledge shared across design and manufacture using a foundation ontology

Seamless computer-based knowledge sharing between departments of a manufacturing enterprise is useful in preventing unnecessary design revisions. A lack of interoperability between independently developed knowledge bases, however, is a major impediment in the development of a seamless knowledge sharing system. Interoperability, being an ability to overcome semantic and syntactic differences during computer-based knowledge sharing can be enhanced through the use of foundation ontologies. Foundation or core ontologies can be used to overcome differences existing in more specialized ontologies and to ensure a seamless sharing of knowledge. This is because these ontologies provide a common grounding for domain ontologies to be used by different functions or departments. This common bases can be used by mediation and knowledge verification systems to authenticate the meaning of knowledge understood across different domains. For this reason, this research proposes a knowledge verification framework for developing a system capable of verifying knowledge between those domain ontologies which are developed out of a common core or foundation ontology. This framework makes use of ontology logic to standardize the way concepts from a foundation and core-concepts ontology are used in domain ontologies and then by using the same principles the knowledge being shared is verified

Towards the ontology-based consolidation of production-centric standards

Production-­centric international standards are intended to serve as an important route towards information sharing across manufacturing decision support systems. As a consequence of textual-­based definitions of concepts acknowledged within these standards, their inability to fully interoperate becomes an issue especially since a multitude of standards are required to cover the needs of extensive domains such as manufacturing industries. To help reinforce the current understanding to support the consolidation of production-­centric standards for improved information sharing, this article explores the specification of well-defined core concepts which can be used as a basis for capturing tailored semantic definitions. The potentials of two heavyweight ontological approaches, notably Common Logic (CL) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) as candidates for the task, are also exposed. An important finding regarding these two methods is that while an OWL-­based approach shows capabilities towards applications which may require flexible hierarchies of concepts, a CL-­based method represents a favoured contender for scoped and facts-­driven manufacturing applications

Extending product lifecycle management for manufacturing knowledge sharing

Product lifecycle management provides a framework for information sharing that promotes various types of decisionmaking procedures. For product lifecycle management to advance towards knowledge-driven decision support, then this demands more than simply exchanging information. There is, therefore, a need to formally capture best practice through-life engineering knowledge that can be fed back across the product lifecycle. This article investigates the interoperable manufacturing knowledge systems concept. Interoperable manufacturing knowledge systems use an expressive ontological approach that drives the improved configuration of product lifecycle management systems for manufacturing knowledge sharing. An ontology of relevant core product lifecycle concepts is identified from which viewpoint-specific domains, such as design and manufacture, can be formalised. Essential ontology-based mechanisms are accommodated to support the verification and sharing of manufacturing knowledge across domains. The work has been experimentally assessed using an aerospace compressor disc design and manufacture example. While it has been demonstrated that the approach supports the representation of disparate design and manufacture perspectives as well as manufacturing knowledge feedback in a timely manner, areas for improvement have also been identified for future work

Exploiting unified modelling language (UML) as a preliminary design tool for Common Logic-based ontologies in manufacturing

This paper proposes a particular method which utilises the unified modelling language (UML) as a design visualisation tool for modelling ontologies based on the Common Logic knowledge representation language. The use of this method will enable Common Logic ontological concepts to be more readily accessible to general engineers and provide a valuable ontology design aid. The method proposed is explored using the knowledge frame language (KFL) which provides constructs to facilitate ontology building and is built on Common Logic. The major constructs of KFL are briefly defined and a description of how each construct may be represented in UML is given. Examples are presented showing how the constructs may be modelled in UML and a Common Logic-based implementation founded on a UML design is illustrated and discussed. The manufacturing domain is utilised as an experimental basis for demonstrating the proposed method