Article

Semantic technologies for engineering asset life cycle management

International Journal of Production Research

November 2013
51(23-24)

DOI:10.1080/00207543.2012.761364

Authors:

Dimitris Kiritsis

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne

The use of semantic technologies and ontologies is becoming more and more popular in engineering applications and particularly in product modelling. Still, the use is limited in academia and applications are of a small scale. In this paper we present the research work done by the closed-loop life cycle management (CL2M) team of the Laboratory for Computer-Aided Design and Production (LICP) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, on the use of ontology-based technologies for the life cycle management of products and engineering assets. This research has been performed through a number of PhD works partially financed by the European Framework Program for research. It aims at providing both a wider understanding of the benefits of applying such technologies in the complex environment of asset life cycle management (ALM) and at providing a platform for implementing ontology models in industrial environments.

Ontology-Based Information Integration: A State-of-the-Art Review in Road Asset Management

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Oct 2021

As a novel and efficient method of knowledge management, ontology provides a machine-processable technique to establish structured knowledge/information for effective management. The advantages, disadvantages, and future directions of ontology in road asset management, which relies heavily on acquiring and using data, are attracting much research attention over the past few years. This paper aims to provide a thorough and systematic review of ontology, including its development and implementation, in road asset management. In total, 45 journal papers and 12 conference papers published over the last 14 years were reviewed, sorted, and analysed. It is observed that: (1) most ontologies in road asset management target at traffic service and road assets; (2) most ontologies are designed to support the operation and maintenance stage; and (3) RDF-based language and OWL semantics are the two most popular ontology technique. From the review, it is found that the current development and implementation of ontology in road asset management also have a few limitations, including the lack of specific ontology engineering approach, the lack of an automatic mechanism to capture instances, properties and relationships, limited ontologies techniques in this field, and the lack of sharing and linking ontologies of different domains. This study provides useful reference for the architecture, engineering and construction industry to understand and select the most appropriate ontology techniques for creating structured knowledge bases and making effective knowledge management decisions.

The impact of digitalization on product lifecycle management: How to deal with it?

Conference Paper

Dec 2017

Conceptual Framework for a Data Model to Support Asset Management Decision-Making Process

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Aug 2019

Information and data management is nowadays a central issue to support the Asset Management (AM) decision-making process. Manufacturing companies have to take different decisions along the asset lifecycle and at different organisational levels, and, to this end, they require proper information and data management. In the literature, besides the crucial role played by information and data, there is evidence of existing gaps, especially related to information management and integration, and transformation of data into useful information. Thus, a conceptual framework is proposed to guide the definition of a data model to fulfil the previously identified gap. Generally, the framework aims at contributing to the improvement of the integration of information along the AM decision-making process. Specifically, it is intended to be aligned with the AM theory and, in particular, its fundamentals defined in the scientific literature and the ISO 5500x body of standards. Overall, thanks to the improvement of the information management and integration along with the AM decision-making, the expectation is to be capable of achieving more value-oriented decisions for the asset lifecycle.

Applying cognitive computing to maintainer-collected data

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Automated analysis of product related data generated from PLM ontology

Article

Jan 2015

Ana Milicic

In recent years, ontology for the Product Lifecycle Management domain has raised a lot of interest in research communities, both academic and industrial. It has emerged as a convenient method for supporting the concept of closed lifecycle information loop, which is one of the most important issues of PLM. By modeling relevant aspects collected from all lifecycle stages of a product, within one ontology, a common knowledge structure is created accessible to all actors. Assuming that appropriate mechanisms for updating ontology (or rather, instances that populate it) are provided, ontology becomes a base layer for a knowledge management platform. Useful experience and information from all productsâ life-cycle stages, can influence designerâs decisions and business strategies. The industrial research community has recognized this added value of ontological implementation, and there is an increasing number of developed ontologies for this purpose. Application of ontology contributes to time efficiency by reducing the time required to retrieve information. Furthermore, it allows for the enhancement of design decisions which are supported through additional information at the appropriate moment. Finally, ontology gives an overall perspective on a product's lifecycle, allowing from-the-top optimization. Different domains modeled in ontology, and software platforms that use them as a base layer, become interoperable and convenient to merge. The purpose of ontology as it is today is not to store data, for the most part because there are more efficient data base systems to handle large data amounts. Still, the domain modeled within ontology is composed of structured and un-structured data sets, and ontology itself can give us a top view on relations and dependences between these data sets. In this perspective, it holds a strong similarity to a relational data base, if relations in the data base where defined so that they depicted the real world in the most precise possible manner. In large companies today, handling a growing amount of data generated every day is becoming an increasingly relevant problem. Managing and storing them, although challenging, is still feasible, but holding data without understanding it carries little added value. In an effort to exploit useful information contained in unstructured data sources, a number of decision support systems and enterprise resource planning systems have been developed. They can be very diverse in functionality and efficiency but the one thing that they all have in common is that the user has to be the one making the initiative and defining the queries. This means that the user has to know which information he is looking for, or hoping to extract. As a consequence, the number of relevant correlations and dependencies between different factors of real life captured in the data are left unnoticed, simply because they were not assumed. In the PLM domain, this is particularly present since it involves a number of actors and most of them are interacting only with a small subset of domain concepts. Data mining as a discipline, gives a number of tools for resolving this issue. All of the algorithms are designed to detect correlations, underlying patterns or functions that generated the data. The problem of data mining techniques is that they are still performed mostly manually. Although deterministic steps of data mining procedures can be supported by existing software tools, the others remain an obstac

An Ontology-based Engineering methodology applied to aerospace Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems design

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An ontology for maintenance procedure documentation

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May 2023
Appl Ontol

In mining, manufacturing and industrial process industries, maintenance procedures are used as an aid to guide technicians through complex manual tasks. These procedures are not machine-readable, and cannot support reasoning in digitally integrated manufacturing systems. Procedure documents contain unstructured text and are stored in a variety of formats. The aim of this work is to query information held in real industrial maintenance procedures. To achieve this, we develop an ontology for maintenance procedures using the OWL 2 description language. We leverage classes and object properties from the ISO 15926 Part 14 Upper Ontology and create a domain ontology. The key contribution of this paper is a demonstration of trade-offs required when modelling an existing engineering artifact, where an abstraction of its contents is given a-priori. We provide an ontologically rigorous abstraction of notions captured in procedure documentation to a set of classes, relations and axioms that allow reasoning over the contents. Validation of the ontology is performed via a series of competency questions based on queries relevant to technicians, engineers and schedulers in industry. The ontology is applied to real world maintenance procedures from two industrial organisations.

An Ontology-based Engineering system to support aircraft manufacturing system design

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Apr 2023
J MANUF SYST

During the conceptual design phase of an aircraft manufacturing system, different industrial scenarios need to be evaluated against performance indicators in a collaborative engineering process. Domain experts’ knowledge and the motivations for decision-making is a crucial asset for enterprises which is challenging to be captured and capitalised. Ontology-based Engineering (OBE) systems emerge as a new generation of Knowledge-based Engineering techniques with advancements of ontology engineering methods and computer science technologies. Ontologies enable to capture both explicit and implicit domain knowledge from historical records and domain experts. These Ontology-based Engineering systems can stand highly complex collaborative design processes involving multidisciplinary stakeholders and various digital tools. This paper proposes a tradespace framework with Ontology-based Engineering features included on top of existing Model-Based System Engineering and interoperability capabilities. These additional Ontology-based Engineering features reuse formalised knowledge via knowledge graph technologies and generative algorithms, changing the cognitive process from the designer, to an automatic process which generates design alternatives for the designer. The tradespace framework is demonstrated in a case study to design the aircraft fuselage orbital joint process, helping the designer to take better strategic decisions at conceptual phase and proving to be an advantageous paradigm for the design process.

Information as a key dimension to develop industrial asset management in manufacturing

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Full-text available

Apr 2021
J Qual Mainten Eng

Purpose The purpose of this work is to investigate industrial asset management (AM) in manufacturing. After depicting gaps for AM in this sector, the role of information as a key dimension is considered to realise a summary of challenges and advices for future development. Design/methodology/approach The work is grounded on an extensive systematic literature review. Considering the eligible documents, descriptive statistics are provided and a content analysis is performed, both based on a sector-independent normative-based framework of analysis. Findings AM principles, organisation and information are the dimensions defined to group ten areas of interest for AM in manufacturing. Information is the major concern for an effective AM implementation. Moreover, Internet of Things and big data management and analytics, as well as data modelling and ontology engineering, are the major technologies envisioned to advance the implementation of AM in manufacturing. Research limitations/implications The identified challenges and advices for future development may serve to stimulate further research on AM in manufacturing, with special focus on information and data management. The sector-independent normative-based framework may also enable to analyse AM in different contexts of application, thus favouring cross-sectorial comparisons. Originality/value Industries with higher operational risk, like Oil&Gas and infrastructure, are advanced in AM, while others, like some in manufacturing, are laggard in this respect. This literature review is the first of a kind addressing AM in manufacturing and depicts the state-of-the-art to pave the way for future research and development.

Enterprise information systems interoperability for asset lifecycle management to enhance circular manufacturing

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Jan 2021

The present work considers information and data as a cornerstone for an effective Circular Manufacturing (CM). Focusing on complex industrial assets it also postulates the relevance to develop CM strategies having both the perspective of the Original Equipment Manufacturer, or asset provider, and the asset user. In this scope, a particular emphasis is given on enterprise information systems interoperability as enabler: for CM strategies to be effective, data are required to be exchanged between various enterprise information systems (EIS) hold by the two parties. Therefore, the mapping of data required for each CM strategy along the product/asset lifecycle is performed, and an overview of the EIS interoperability for CM enhancement is discussed, leveraging on ontologies concept.

Reuse of standard ontologies in modeling Product-Service lifecycle ontology

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Jul 2017

This work deals with the reuse of existing standard vocabularies and ontologies for the purpose of extending the Product Service Lifecycle Ontology (PSLO), which was previously developed for service lifecycle data integration. Schema.org, Organization Ontology, FOAF and GoodRelations are reused through the revision of PSLO. A case study is provided to demonstrate how the use of CONSTRUCT query of SPARQL 1.1 can help retrieve a person's information participating in a service offering procedure. In order to create realistic individual information , this work also presents how data materialization is achieved using the OnTop tool and reading SQL databases.

Supplier performance evaluation for 500 kV main transformer

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As an important state-owned energy backbone enterprise related to national energy security and the lifeline of national economy, power grid enterprises are responsible for ensuring the quality and safety of equipment and promoting the development of equipment quality. Therefore, continuously improving the quality evaluation of main transformer equipment is very important to improve the quality of power grid main transformer equipment. This paper first constructs the main transformer equipment quality evaluation index system from equipment procurement, equipment installation, equipment use and equipment decommissioning and scrapping; on this basis, the scoring method of each evaluation index is given, and the final main transformer equipment quality evaluation score is calculated by combining subjective and objective weight determination method; Finally, according to the evaluation of 500kV main transformer equipment of provincial power grid company price score, to evaluate the performance of equipment quality provided by suppliers.

Performance evaluation of main transformer equipment suppliers for 500kV main transformer equipment

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Scientific evaluation of the main transformer equipment suppliers is the premise to ensure the cost control and safe operation of the power grid. Based on the analysis of various factors affecting the main transformer equipment supplier, the evaluation index of the main transformer equipment supplier is constructed. Considering the fuzziness of the evaluation index, the index weight is determined by AHP, and the evaluation model of main transformer equipment supplier based on fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is established. The example calculation shows that the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method can fully reveal the evaluation index information and reflect the actual situation of main transformer equipment suppliers scientifically and reasonably.

COVID-19 ile İvmelenen Dijitalleşmenin PLM’e Etkileri

Article

Dec 2020

Çalışma kapsamında COVID-19 salgını ile birlikte hız kazanan dijitalleşme trendinin, Ürün Yaşam Döngüsü Yönetimi (PLM) ile olan potansiyel etkileşimi araştırılmıştır. Konuya dair literatür taraması yapılmış, bu kapsamdaki araştırmalar incelenmiş ve neticesinde COVID-19 ile birlikte başlayan süreç içerisinde dijitalleşmenin kuruluşlar için artık kaçınılmaz olduğu ve dijitalleşmenin PLM ile anlamlı olacağına dair bulgular elde edilmiştir. PLM’in ürün yaşam döngüsü fazları açıklanarak, her fazda dijitalleşmenin etkileri açıklanmıştır. Dijitalleşme, dijital ikiz kavramı ve uygulamalarına değinilmiş ve ürün yaşam döngüsünde etkilediği aşamalar açıklanmıştır. Daha sonra, PLM ve dijitalleşme ilişkisinden bahsedilerek, dijitalleşmenin ürün başlangıcı (BOL), ürün ortası (MOL) ve ürün sonu (EOL) aşamalarında olan etkileri açıklanmıştır. Neticede, anlamlı bir dijitalleşmenin PLM ile mümkün olacağı ve dijitalleşme ile PLM’in birbirini tamamlayan kavramlar olduğundan hareketle, COVID – 19 ile başlayan sürecin PLM konseptinin yaygınlaşmasına ve farkındalığının artmasına katkı sağlayacağını ifade etmek mümkündür.

Data taxonomy to manage information and data in Maintenance Management

Article

Jan 2020

Nowadays Maintenance Management (MM) is covering a primary role for competitiveness in manufacturing. The advent of Asset Management (AM), in which MM is a core function, enlarges the scope MM was used to. Besides, digitalization has brought a vast amount of information and data sources that MM may exploit to improve its processes and asset-related decision-making. This evolution of MM has brought a lot of opportunities but also various criticalities about information and data management. Data models are envisioned to provide significant support to this end. However, a common reference data taxonomy is needed for the correct development of data models. This work aims at exploring how the data taxonomy could help in addressing the current criticalities by synthesizing most information and data classes that support MM. The data taxonomy, along with other elements, like data models, effectively support companies in improving the management of their information and data. The usefulness of a data taxonomy is proved thanks to action research in a company within the automotive sector aiming at improving the MM process.

On the requirements of digital twin-driven autonomous maintenance

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Sep 2020
ANNU REV CONTROL

Autonomy has become a focal point for research and development in many industries. Whilst this was traditionally achieved by modelling self-engineering behaviours at the component-level, efforts are now being focused on the sub-system and system-level through advancements in artificial intelligence. Exploiting its benefits requires some innovative thinking to integrate overarching concepts from big data analysis, digitisation, sensing, optimisation, information technology, and systems engineering. With recent developments in Industry 4.0, machine learning and digital twin, there has been a growing interest in adapting these concepts to achieve autonomous maintenance; the automation of predictive maintenance scheduling directly from operational data and for in-built repair at the systems-level. However, there is still ambiguity whether state-of-the-art developments are truly autonomous or they simply automate a process. In light of this, it is important to present the current perspectives about where the technology stands today and indicate possible routes for the future. As a result, this effort focuses on recent trends in autonomous maintenance before moving on to discuss digital twin as a vehicle for decision making from the viewpoint of requirements, whilst the role of AI in assisting with this process is also explored. A suggested framework for integrating digital twin strategies within maintenance models is also discussed. Finally, the article looks towards future directions on the likely evolution and implications for its development as a sustainable technology.

Semantic Model-Driven PLM Data Interoperability: An Application for Aircraft Ground Functional Testing with Eco-Design Criteria

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Aug 2019

The latest developments in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and Product Life-Cycle Management (PLM) are playing a role in the evolution of the aeronautical industry. Despite the reluctance of this domain to accept the introduction of technology leaps in the production process - mostly due to safety reasons - aircraft manufacturers are slowly moving to a new digital factory concept. The deployment of a PLM Tool for Aircraft Ground Functional testing with Eco-design criteria can be leveraged to improve both sustainability of the assembly line and efficiency of the Ground System Tests process end to end, however, heterogeneous data interoperability represents one of the major challenges in this framework. The ontology-based solution proposed in this work addresses this challenge, thus, shows how semantics can be exploited to streamline the data pipeline throughout a PLM digital platform.

Towards a Semantically-Enriched Framework for Human Resource Management

Conference Paper

Aug 2017

Human resources are one of the most important assets of an organization. The setup of a proper Human Resource Management system undoubtedly represents one of the pillars upon which any organization should be built. Many effective standards and solutions have been proposed in the past decades. However, the ever changing environment and the emerging technologies, such as ontologies and linked data, lead to adapt them and consider new approaches. The solution proposed in this document aims to combine existing standards for manufacturing information and ontology modelling. As a result, the development of an ontology model enhancing the HR information flow with semantics, on the one hand, enables the use of common data formats and exchange protocols promoted by the world Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and exploitable on the Sematic Web. On the other hand, it lays the foundations for an automated decision making process based on inference rules and smart data management. A study has been performed in a real-life industry revealing highly notable results.

Decisions as Units of Organizational Knowledge to Manage Complexity

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Feb 2016

Effective decision making can help organizations to manage complexity. Here we argue that considering decisions as units of organizational knowledge and providing a means for decision storage, retrieval and reuse can facilitate effective decision making. To enable the recording and retrieval of decisions, a conceptual model is presented that can be used as a set of requirements for a data structure for decision storage. The approach conforms partly to the proposed Common Decision Exchange Protocol (CDEP) standard, but we extend it to capture decision attributes, decision making stages, decision makers and other collaborators, and the information and tools used. Capturing the linkages between decision elements enables a wide range of organizational decision making processes to be encoded for ontological reasoning. We show the derivation of a new conceptual model from cases. We use the context of decision making in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to motivate and illustrate the conceptual model.

Decisions as Units of Organizational Knowledge to Manage Complexity

Chapter

Mar 2016

Effective decision making can help organizations to manage complexity. Here we argue that considering decisions as units of organizational knowledge and providing a means for decision storage, retrieval and reuse can facilitate effective decision making. To enable the recording and retrieval of decisions, a conceptual model is presented that can be used as a set of requirements for a data structure for decision storage. The approach conforms partly to the proposed Common Decision Exchange Protocol (CDEP) standard, but we extend it to capture decision attributes, decision making stages, decision makers and other collaborators , and the information and tools used. Capturing the linkages between decision elements enables a wide range of organizational decision making processes to be encoded for ontological reasoning. We show the derivation of a new conceptual model from cases. We use the context of decision making in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to motivate and illustrate the conceptual model.

Integration of Design Intent during the Product Lifecycle Management

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There has been significant achievement in integrating product data during the whole lifecycle phases with shared common ontologies while taking advantage of intelligent retrieval mechanisms. In order to support integrated decision making on product redesign or maintenance operations, we should solve a challenging issue: ‘how the product lifecycle management (PLM) stores and retrieves the know-how and the knowledge of an organization concerning manufactured products’. This paper describes the extension of a previously developed PLM Semantic Ontology Model toward integration with design intent. The proposed approach uses OWL2 to represent product lifecycle data and design knowledge. The approach was applied to the redesign of a car door part for laser welding. Our work demonstrates how to retrieve design intent as a specific type of knowledge data in the context of design decisions. Such an approach can ultimately contribute to reducing design time, making knowledge transfer clear and thus improving the quality of designed products. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2014.

Optimize Energy Efficiency in the Supply Chain of FMCGs with the Use of Semantic Web Technologies

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Supply Chain Management is a critical domain for Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs). This domain is known for its complexity. New standards and regulations regarding Energy Efficiency and Environmental Aspects in general, as well as customer demand, make the analysis, modeling and design of the Supply Chain more and more complicated. Partners involved in these processes are numerous and of diverse background. To help solving this problem, common understanding of the domain and exchange of information among partners involved in the Supply Chain is of high importance. An ontology capturing the knowledge of the domain was created. To achieve maximum efficiency of the domain operations in terms of cost, quality of service and environmental impact, concept definitions from multiple sources were gathered. An advanced software solution that leverages semantic web technologies, enables users to link data from multiple Excel spreadsheets and relational databases together in real-time for data collection, collaboration, and reporting. In this framework, a new way for collaboration throughout the supply chain with the use of an underlying ontology, semantic technologies and visualization technics is introduced. The proposed approach is applied in the context of the FP7 European project e-SAVE.

A semantic HUB within the future of PLM

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Company knowledge is a key success to predictthe future needs, if it explored in a consistent and orderlymanner. The actual difficulties in product / process designare linked to information exchange at the right time for theright person, often not exploited because of the heterogeneity of information data. The reuse of knowledge in a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is difficult without using a rationalization approach and methodology. In this paper, a new conceptual approach is developed based on contextualization of knowledge to anticipate changes and integration of new technologies in product/proces design. A semantic HUB can manage all systems interfaces within an optimized design in a proactive engineering way, reducing errors and product time to market.

Decisions as Units of Organizational Knowledge to Manage Complexity

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Ontology-based approach for product information exchange

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Mar 2015

The paper presents smooth product information and knowledge exchange (SPIKE), an ontology-based methodology for exchanging information between product lifecycle management (PLM) systems. SPIKE does not concern a limited manufacturing field or specific industrial sector. The concerned information deals with the whole product lifecycle information except the geometric or 3D data. The product lifecycle information is not handled exclusively by PLM systems; they are also managed by other systems such as enterprise resource planning. The proposed exchange approach does not lead to any technology constraint or tool. It presents an implementation of SPIKE based on the standard semantic web languages via the I-Semantec platform.

Knowledge management and reuse in collaborative product development – A semantic relationship management based approach

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Oct 2014

In the current globalized context of industry, constant improvement of competitiveness remains a major issue for companies. Through the past few years, considering the latest technological advances, the product complexity, as well as related manufacturing processes, have increased. Nowadays, Product Lifecycle Management systems are seen to be essential and strategic components of enterprise information system in order to harmonize collaborative data management especially in the collaborative product development. Considering knowledge management and reuse purposes, it is not currently the case when product data distributed in various and heterogeneous information systems must be browsed. In such a context, methods and tools for information and knowledge extraction (from heterogeneous systems) and visualization play an important role, given their capacity to extract, represent and organize the engineering information and knowledge throughout the whole product lifecycle. The paper proposes a semantic relationship management based approach to improve knowledge management and reuse in collaborative product development.

Industrial open source solutions for product life cycle management

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2014

The authors go through the open source for product life cycle management (PLM) and the efforts done from communities such as the open source initiative. The characteristics of the open source solutions are highlighted as well. Next, the authors go through the requirements for PLM. This is an area where more attention has been given as the manufacturers are competing with the quality and life cycle costs of their products. Especially, the need of companies to try to get a strong position in providing services for their products and thus to make themselves less vulnerable to changes in the market has led to high interest in product life cycle simulation. The potential of applying semantic data management to solve these problems discussed in the light of recent developments. In addition, a basic roadmap is presented as to how the above-described problems could be tackled with open software solutions.

Industrial open source solutions for product life cycle management

Article

Aug 2014

Jaime Campos

Organisatorische Innovationen mit Good Governance in Logistik-Netzwerken – Zusammenfassender Schlussbericht für das Verbundprojekt OrGoLo

Technical Report

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Dec 2014

Stephan Zelewski

Confidently extracting hierarchical taxonomy information from unstructured maintenance records of industrial equipment

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Jan 2023

Maintenance records of complex industrial equipment contain a large amount of unstructured data (e.g. technician notes) pertaining to repair actions and associated equipment sub-components, degradation conditions, failure mechanisms, etc. These unstructured data can yield valuable insights to improve the equipment design and maintenance plans, resulting in higher productivity and lower operating costs. Since manual review of information is time-consuming, companies make limited use of the maintenance records. To address this opportunity, we propose a taxonomy-guided method for automatically analysing the unstructured data and inferring critical information, specifically the hierarchy of the equipment's sub-assemblies and constituent parts that malfunctioned or failed during a breakdown event. Our method leverages syntactic (related to word frequency) as well as semantic (related to word co-occurrence and their meaning) knowledge. A novel contribution of our work is that we provide a confidence score for the information inferred by our method. Only the maintenance records which receive a low confidence score will require manual review to confirm the automated method's results, thus ensuring minimal use of human resources. We demonstrate the performance of our method using a real-world data set from equipment used in oil rigs.

Industry Commons: an ecosystem approach to horizontal enablers for sustainable cross-domain industrial innovation (a positioning paper)

Article

Oct 2021

This paper introduces the background, concept and definition of the Industry Commons. It initiates a discussion on the positioning of the Industry Commons Ecosystem (ICE) with respect to current research directions in advanced manufacturing and production systems that shape advances in engineering and technology, novel business models and innovation breakthroughs. The potential value of data sharing across industrial domains is estimated at over $100 billion, particularly in view of optimising manufacturing processes. Data sharing across domains however faces a series of well-documented challenges associated with the lack of semantic interoperability and related standards, management of trust and sustainability. Solving bottlenecks in data sharing requires a systemic approach to data management, which can account for all aspects of data use, levels of application, attribution and dynamic exchanges. In this paper we propose a high-level ecosystem approach that integrates societal values with digital affordances of industry’s cognitive-assisted processes, remote interfacing, hybrid applications and large-scale value networks. Early development of an Ontology Commons EcoSystem (OCES) is presented as the key enabling framework for Industry Commons interoperability and a series of enabling frameworks form the basis of future research directions in Trusted Data Sharing and Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management for greater sustainability. Abbreviations: AI – Artificial Intelligence; AIOTI – Alliance of Internet-of-Things Innovation; ALM – Asset Lifecycle Management; ALO – Application-Level Ontology; AP – Application Protocol; API – Application Programming Interface; B2B – Business-to-Business; B2C – Business-to-Customer; CDE – Cross-Domain Ecosystem; CDEI – Cross-Domain Ecosystem Interoperability; CL2M – Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management; CNO – Collaborative Networked Organisations; CPS – Cyber-Physical Systems; CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility; DLO – Domain-Level Ontology; DLT – Distributed Ledger Technology; EM – Enterprise Modelling; FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable; GUI – Graphical User Interface; ICE, Industry Commons Ecosystem; IOF – Industrial Ontology Foundry; IP – Intellectual Property; IPR – Intellectual Property Rights; ISN – Intertwined Supply Network; MIR – Music Information Retrieval; MLO – Middle-Level Ontology; MO – Meta-Ontology; OCES – Ontology Commons EcoSystem; PI – Physical Internet; PLM – Product Lifecycle Management; ROI – Return-on-Investment; SC – Supply Chain; SCM – Supply Chain Management; SOS – System-of-Systems; TDS – Trusted Data Sharing; TLO – Top-Level Ontology; TRO – Top Reference Ontology; TUI – Tangible User Interface.

Knowledge reuse for ontology modelling in Maintenance and Industrial Asset Management

Article

Oct 2021

Maintenance and Industrial Asset Management (AM) are fundamental business processes in guaranteeing the availability of physical assets at minimum risk and cost, while balancing the interests of several stakeholders. To reach operational excellence, intra- and inter-enterprise interoperability of systems is needed to support information management and integration between several involved parties. To this end, ontology engineering is relevant since it supports interoperability at technical and semantic levels. However, ontology modelling methodologies are varied, and several best practices exist, among which knowledge reuse. Nevertheless, reusing extant knowledge is not completely exploited so far, causing a heterogeneous ensemble of ontologies that are not orchestrated. The present work aims at promoting the adoption of knowledge reuse for ontology modelling in maintenance and AM. Therefore, an extensive review of existing ontologies for the two targeted business processes is performed with a twofold objective: firstly, to realise a cross-industrial ontological compendium, and secondly to understand the state of art of ontology modelling in maintenance and AM. To support the adoption of knowledge reuse, this practice is framed in AMODO (Asset Management Ontology Development methOdology). Finally, a laboratory-sized showcase is provided to prove the usefulness of relying on knowledge reuse during the ontology development. The results show that the developed ontology is realised faster and is inherently aligned with established ontologies, towards enterprise systems interoperability. Consequently, maintenance and AM business processes may rely on information management and integration to pursue operational excellence.

Ontology-augmented Prognostics and Health Management for shopfloor-synchronised joint maintenance and production management decisions

Article

Oct 2021

In smart factories, guaranteeing shopfloor-synchronised and real-time decision-making is essential to be responsive to the ever-changing internal environment, namely the shopfloor of the production system and assets. At operational level, decisions should balance counter acting objectives of maintenance and production; therefore, their decision-making processes should be joint and coordinated, to fulfil production requirements considering the health state of the assets. The knowledge of the current state is promoted by the application of Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) as an aid to support informed decision-making. Nevertheless, PHM-purposed information is usually not complete in terms of production requirements. To support joint maintenance and production management decisions, an ontological approach is proposed. The ontology, called ORMA (Ontology for Reliability-centred MAintenance), has a modular structure, including formalisation of asset, process, and product knowledge. Via suitable relationships, rules, and axioms, ORMA can infer product feasibility based on the current health state of the assets and their functional units. ORMA is implemented in a Flexible Manufacturing Line at a laboratory scale. Therein, an integrated solution, involving a health state detection algorithm that interacts with the ontology, supports human decision-making via a web-based dashboard; joint maintenance and production management decisions can be then taken, relying on diversified information provided by the PHM algorithm as well as the augmentation via ontology reasoning. The proposed ontology-based solution represents a step towards reconfigurability of smart factories where human and automated decision-making processes work in synergy.

COVID-19 ile İvmelenen Dijitalleşmenin PLM’e Etkileri

Article

Sep 2020

ROMAIN: Towards a BFO compliant reference ontology for industrial maintenance

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2019

In this paper, we present a domain-specific, open access, reference ontology (ROMAIN) for the maintenance management domain. We use a hybrid approach, based on a top-down alignment to an open source top-level ontology, the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), and a bottom up focus on classes that are grounded in maintenance practice. We constrain the scope of the ontology to the classes that are unique to the maintenance management practice, such as maintenance strategy, degradation, and work order management, rather than modeling the entire domain of maintenance. This approach reduces the scope of the development task and enables reasoning to be tested at a manageable scale. ROMAIN provides a unifying framework that can be used in conjunction with other BFO compliant sub-domain ontologies, such as planning and scheduling ontologies. The proposed ontology is validated using real-life data in the context of a use case related to evaluating the effectiveness of maintenance strategy.

Sharing Knowledge When it Cannot be Made Explicit: The Case of Product Lifecycle Management Systems

Article

Oct 2018

Information systems often strengthen a preference for working alone: interoperability as much as interpretation variance restrain the ability of people and systems to interact and to work together within an extended enterprise. In this article, the authors propose to extend product lifecycle management (PLM) systems in order to share not only (1) knowledge that has been made explicit and which is strongly contextualized so that there is no interpretation variance, but also (2) knowledge that cannot be made explicit and which remains tacit knowledge, needing social interaction and shared understanding to be actually shared. The use of a collaborative platform is proposed in this article in order to allow stakeholders to produce a shared understanding of what a concept means through the use of ontologies. The conditions as well as the limits of the proposition are discussed at the end of this article.

Knowledge as a service in the IoT era

Conference Paper

Oct 2017

As IoT envisions a future world where a tremendous amount of sensor data will become available, the significance of extracting valuable knowledge out of those data is increasing day by day. IoT analytics are considered a powerful tool towards demystifying user behavior, providing market insights and intelligence in Industry 4.0 as well as discovering useful patterns in everyday phenomena. At the same time, a shift is observed to Service-Oriented-Infrastructure. In this work, a Knowledge as a Service (KnaaS) framework is proposed along with its prototype implementation architecture aiming at providing a conceptual reference architecture for the knowledge discovery in the future IoT. The discussion and analysis show that the proposed framework is in accordance with the best practices in knowledge discovery and IoT consisting a reasonable solution in offering knowledge as a service in the upcoming IoT era.

User Story Mapping-Based Method for Domain Semantic Modeling

Chapter

Jul 2016

User story mapping (USM) for domain modeling is a method derived from the software functionality definition domain, which puts the end-user and his perspective in focus. The domain of interest is defined through the collection of user activities, which indirectly gathers all actors, resources, processes and overall dynamics of the domain. USM is a manual procedure that is conducted between the semantics expert and the domain expert, and can sometimes require a number of time-consuming iterations. The ADOxx metamodeling platform facilitated the development of a USM digital tool which provides enhanced performance and visual environment.

Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management of Service and Product in the Internet of Things: Semantic Framework for Knowledge Integration

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2016
SENSORS-BASEL

This paper describes our conceptual framework of closed-loop lifecycle information sharing for product-service in the Internet of Things (IoT). The framework is based on the ontology model of product-service and a type of IoT message standard, Open Messaging Interface (O-MI) and Open Data Format (O-DF), which ensures data communication. (1) Background: Based on an existing product lifecycle management (PLM) methodology, we enhanced the ontology model for the purpose of integrating efficiently the product-service ontology model that was newly developed; (2) Methods: The IoT message transfer layer is vertically integrated into a semantic knowledge framework inside which a Semantic Info-Node Agent (SINA) uses the message format as a common protocol of product-service lifecycle data transfer; (3) Results: The product-service ontology model facilitates information retrieval and knowledge extraction during the product lifecycle, while making more information available for the sake of service business creation. The vertical integration of IoT message transfer, encompassing all semantic layers, helps achieve a more flexible and modular approach to knowledge sharing in an IoT environment; (4) Contribution: A semantic data annotation applied to IoT can contribute to enhancing collected data types, which entails a richer knowledge extraction. The ontology-based PLM model enables as well the horizontal integration of heterogeneous PLM data while breaking traditional vertical information silos; (5) Conclusion: The framework was applied to a fictive case study with an electric car service for the purpose of demonstration. For the purpose of demonstrating the feasibility of the approach, the semantic model is implemented in Sesame APIs, which play the role of an Internet-connected Resource Description Framework (RDF) database.

Wireless Condition Monitoring Integrating Smart Computing and Optical Sensor Technologies

Article

Jan 2015

Condition monitoring is increasingly benefitting from the application of emerging technologies, such as mobile computing and wireless sensors, including photonics sensors. The latter can be applicable to diverse application needs, due to their versatility, low costs, installation and operational flexibility, as well as unique safety and reliable operation characteristics in real industrial environments of excessive electromagnetic interference and noise. Coupling the monitoring flexibility offered by photonics technologies, with the data transmission flexibility of wireless networking provides opportunities to develop hybrid wireless sensor solutions, incorporating optical sensors into wireless condition monitoring architectures. This paper presents ongoing work within an integrated architecture for condition monitoring and maintenance management support, exploiting the added value of optical technology, inherently safe with respect to electromagnetic compatibility. The reported results are part of a collaborative project involving technology providers in wireless sensor networking, embedded systems and maintenance engineering, as well as research organizations active on photonics technologies and informatics for wireless and intelligence-enabled engineering asset management. The industrial test cases are from a lifts manufacturing industry, focusing on both production facilities assets, as well as on the end-product. The photonic platform of plastic optical fibers was selected due to its versatility and suitability for rapid customization and prototyping. The platform can serve diverse sensing and monitoring needs, ranging from physical parameters as strain and displacement in machinery parts, to chemical and biochemical monitoring of industrial-grade coolants’ aging. Use of novel nanostructured optical materials together with laser-based micromachining techniques enabled the functional enhancement through rapid prototyping of optical fiber devices towards highly customizable sensors. The integration of the sensing elements within the wireless sensor network architecture offers substantial flexibility for industrial applications.

Management of distributed knowledge encapsulated in embedded devices

Article

Dec 2015

Embedded electronic devices are now to be found everywhere. In general, they can be used to collect different sorts of data (e.g. on temperature, humidity, illumination and locations). In some specific domains, such as industrial automation, embedded devices are used for process control. The devices may have a programme that can respond immediately to environmental changes perceived through sensors. In the control of large sites, where there are many devices, higher level decisions are made or processed in dedicated computers far away from the sources (devices) where the initial data are collected. This article shows how it is possible to manage portions of distributed knowledge, hosted in embedded devices, making it possible for each embedded device to hold and manage its piece of knowledge. In addition, presented approach allows keeping locus of control at the embedded device level, where the embedded device can make decisions knowing the status of the rest of the world, device contributions and their effects in the overall distributed system knowledge base.

Skill-Based Asset Management: A PLM-Approach for Reconfigurable Production Systems

Conference Paper

Jul 2014

To handle complexity in a modern reconfigurable production system from a strategic and tactical planning perspective as well as to enable operational decision making a skill-based asset management system is introduced. It provides a novel approach of managing assets in the context of the asset lifecycle based on their provided skills. It aims at the vertical integration of higher level management systems with production execution level systems of small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises, using a common skill-based abstraction. Thus the skill-based asset management system can effectively provide digital factory functionality to companies while integrating into their existing IT systems. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2014.

Ontologies in the context of product lifecycle management: State of the art literature review

Article

Sep 2015

The use of ontologies in the context of product lifecycle management (PLM) is gaining importance and popularity, while at the same time it generates a lot of controversy in discussions within scientific and engineering communities. Yet, what is ontology? What challenges have been addressed so far? What role does ontology play? Do we really need ontology? These are the core questions this paper seeks to address. We propose to conduct a comprehensive study of the concept of Ontology firstly in its domain of origin, Philosophy, and secondly in information science. Based on the understanding of this concept and an in-depth analysis of the state of the art, seven key roles of ontology are defined. These roles serve as a framework describing the general state of research on the use of ontologies in the context of PLM.

Towards an ontology for open assembly model

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2007

Description Logic for Product Information Models

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Jan 2008

The languages and logical formalisms developed by information scientists and logicians concentrate on the theory of languages and logical theorem proving. These languages, when used by domain experts to represent their domain of discourse, most often have issues related to the level of expressiveness of the languages and need specific extensions. In this paper we analyze the levels of logical formalisms and expressivity requirements for the development of ontologies for manufacturing products. We first discuss why the representation of a product model is inherently complex and prone to inconsistencies. We then explore how these issues can be overcome through a structured knowledge representation model. We report our evaluation of OWL-DL in terms of expressivity and of the use of SWRL for representing domainspecific rules. We present a case study of product assembly to document this evaluation and further show how the OWL-DL reasoner together with the rule engine can enable reasoning of the product ontology.

OWL-Based Product Ontology Architecture and Representation for Sharing Product Knowledge on a Web

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Jan 2007

A collaborative product development environment requires sharing of product information among its participants. Product knowledge models and international standards have been developed for product information sharing. However, their models have limitations in representing their semantics explicitly, so a computer can not understand their semantics properly. It results in lack of information sharing. Recently, ontology gets attentions for automatic knowledge sharing because it can specify the semantics explicitly and logically. In addition, ontology-related standard language, such as web ontology language (OWL), is also proposed. In this paper, we propose an architecture for an ontology-based product knowledge and a product web ontology language (POWL) based on OWL. The architecture consists of three-level ontologies; meta-, generic and particular product ontology. The meta-product ontology is derived from previous top-level ontologies such as SUMO, DOLCE and Guarino’s ontology. The generic product ontology is developed to provide comprehensive knowledge primitives representing product knowledge. A particular product ontology specify knowledge about a specific product such as car, telephone, ship, etc., and it is defined based on the generic product ontology. Meanwhile, POWL has product knowledge primitives defined in the generic product ontology, and it can be transformed to OWL. So users can define the specific product knowledge based on POWL. We implement the tranformation logic with XSLT and demonstrate a POWL usage with an example.

PROMISE: Product Lifecycle Management and Information Tracking Using Smart Embedded Systems

Chapter

Full-text available

Sep 2009

Product lifecycle management (PLM) processes can be greatly improved and extended if more information on the product and its use is available during the various lifecycle phases. The PROMISE project aims to close the information loop by employing product embedded information devices (PEIDs) in products. In this chapter, we present the goals and application scenarios of the project with special focus on the middleware that enables the communication between PEIDs and enterprise applications. Furthermore, we give details of the design and implementation of the middleware as well as the role of Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) as device-level protocol.

A 4-Dimensionalist Mereotopology

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2008

We develop a formal ontology within the four dimensionalist (4D) paradigm by showing how the algebraic description of spatial mereotopology - a Boolean alge- bra equipped with a connection relation - can be enriched to provide a mereotopology in which the entities are spatio-temporal, rather than spatial, regions. With the 4D ap- proach it is natural to identify a period of time with all of space during that time, and thus to model temporal relations by relations between spatio-temporal regions. Build- ing on the concept of a Boolean connection algebra, we propose two additional struc- tures: an historical closure operator, and a pair of further operators, called pre-history and post-history, which form a Galois connection. We provide axioms for these oper- ators and show how their properties relate to Muller's axiomatization for qualitative spatio-temporal reasoning.

A PLCS framework for PDM/ERP interoperability

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2011

Wide diffusion of methodologies and software relevant to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) in industrial companies faces heterogeneity of information technology (IT) systems. Especially, the lack of interoperability between Product Data Management (PDM) systems, that drive virtual product development, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which manages real product, cannot lead to a global description of the product development process. We demonstrate that a mediator approach is pertinent for the coordination of these two systems. The use of open standards, and more precisely STEP Application Protocol 239, known as Product Lifecycle Support (PLCS), allows overcoming issues related to semantic part of this interoperability. The last part of the study focuses on implementation issues, in order to develop an interoperability framework based upon a consistent product data model, whether the viewpoint is from the design or logistics businesses.

Semantic technologies: Latest advances in agent-based manufacturing control systems

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2011
INT J PROD RES

The manuscript reports on the latest advancements in the field of multi-agent based industrial control systems. It is declared that this area is becoming strongly influenced by the recent massive proliferation of semantic technologies in various fields of software engineering. The application of ontologies for expressing semantics of data does not restrict any longer exclusively on semantic web or semantic web services. Ontologies are being applied for advanced handling, exchanging and reasoning about knowledge in the area of industrial automation, especially in the case of production systems based on multi-agent technology. The paper provides a comprehensive survey of the application of ontologies in agent-based control systems and discusses the common characteristics of such integration. The generic ontology designed for discrete manufacturing, which covers ordering, production planning and material handling aspects is presented. In addition, the framework for integration of this ontology in distributed, agent-based control solutions is given. A proof-of-concept demonstrating the advantages and drawbacks of such integration in a real manufacturing scenario is provided.

Resource monitoring and rule-based notification. Applications in subsea production systems

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2007

Darijus Strasunskas

An industrially driven consortium launched the Integrated Information Platform project in 2004. The main objective was to extend and formalize an existing terminology standard for the petroleum industry (ISO 15926) in to formal ontology. The ontology is used in monitoring of drilling and production processes. The paper presents research in progress on development of rule-based notification in subsea production systems to monitor and analyze production data. The task is elaborated and exemplified by data from the real case.

Open standard, open source and peer-to-peer tools and methods for collaborative product development

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2005
COMPUT IND

This paper reports on a collaborative product development and knowledge management platform for small to medium enterprises. It has been recognised that current product lifecycle management (PLM) implementations are document oriented, have a non-customisable data model and inter-enterprise integration difficulties. To overcome these, an ontological knowledge management methodology utilising the semantic web initiative data formats was added to a PLM and an open source alternative. Shortcomings of centralised architectures are highlighted and a solution using a de-centralised architecture proposed. This is implementable at low cost; the scalability increases in line with user numbers. Ontologies, rules and workflows are reusable and extendable.

Document Space Adapted Ontology: Application in Query Enrichment

Conference Paper

Full-text available

May 2006
Lect Notes Comput Sci

Retrieval of correct and precise information at the right time is essential in knowledge intensive tasks requiring quick decision-making. In this paper, we propose a method for utilizing ontologies to enhance the quality of information retrieval (IR) by query enrichment. We explain how a retrieval system can be tuned by adapting ontologies to provide both an in-depth understanding of the user's needs as well as an easy integration with standard vector-space retrieval systems. The ontology concepts are adapted to the domain terminology by computing a feature vector for each concept. The feature vector is used to enrich a provided query. The ontology and the whole retrieval system are under development as part of a Semantic Web standardization project for the Norwegian oil and gas industry.

Towards a Standard Upper Ontology

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Oct 2001

The Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) is an upper level ontology that has been proposed as a starter document for The Standard Upper Ontology Working Group, an IEEE-sanctioned working group of collaborators from the fields of engineering, philosophy, and information science. The SUMO provides definitions for general-purpose terms and acts as a foundation for more specific domain ontologies. In this paper we outline the strategy used to create the current version of the SUMO, discuss some of the challenges that we faced in constructing the ontology, and describe in detail its most general concepts and the relations between them.

Semantic Interoperability in the Norwegian Petroleum Industry.

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Jan 2006

The petroleum industry is a technically challenging business with high investments, complex projects and operational structures. There are numerous companies and public offices involved in the exploitation of a new oil field, and there is a high degree of specialization among them. Even though standardization has been considered important in this industry for many years, there is still very little integration across phases and disciplines. An industrially driven consortium launched the Integrated Information Platform project in 2004, in which semantic standards based on OWL and Semantic Web technologies were to be developed for the subsea petroleum industry. This paper presents the IIP project in more detail and discusses how industry-wide ontologies can support semantic interoperability and encourage more process integration.

An Operational Definition of Context

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Aug 2007

The definition of context experienced an evolution in the research area of context-aware computing, but still suffers from either generality or in-completeness. Furthermore, many definitions are driven by the ease of imple-mentation. This paper introduces two extensions to available context definitions that provide a natural understanding of this concept to users of context-aware applications and facilitates the engineering of this concept for software devel-opers of such applications.

A Survey on context-aware systems

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2007

Context-aware systems offer entirely new,opportunities for application developers and for end users by gathering,context data and adapting systems behaviour accordingly. Especially incombination,with mobile ,devices these mechanisms ,are of high ,value and ,are used to increase usability tremendously. In this paper, we present common architecture principles of context-aware systems and derive a layered conceptual design framework,to explain the different elements common to most context-aware architectures. Based on these design principles, we introduce various existing context-aware systems focusing ,on context-aware middleware ,and frameworks, which ease the development of context-aware applications. We discuss various approaches,and ,analyse important ,aspects in context-aware computing ,on the ,basis of the presented systems. Keywords:context-awarene ss; context framework; context middleware; sensors; context model;

An Ontology-based model for providing Semantic Maintenance.

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2010

Maintenance is becoming more and more crucial in Asset Lifecycle Management information models. Issues such as collecting, handling and using the asset data produced during its lifecycle in a lean and efficient manner are on top of today's research. Customer satisfaction, compliance with environmental friendly legislation, product quality, high performance and reliability are only a few of the benefits improved maintenance methods and tools may provide to enterprises. In this work we combine the benefits of two previous developed models and we develop a model for Semantic Maintenance. The first model we are based on is the PROMISE semantic object model which was made for supporting Closed-Loop Product Lifecycle Management. The second model is the semantic model of e-maintenance developed in PROTEUS project. The new model described in this paper is named “SMAC-Model”. Its aim is to provide advanced maintenance services as well as feedback for the Beginning of Life and input for End of Life. The model is generic and may be used in various Asset Lifecycle Management cases. It is developed to facilitate complex physical assets and to work in industrial environment.

A review of the MIMOSA OSA-EAI database for condition monitoring systems

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2006

Condition monitoring systems are prevalent in industries that contain critical assets. Their use allows the detection of potential failures at an early stage in order to minimise downtime and maintenance costs of a system. Many condition monitoring systems are commercially available, however these systems are limited in their support of diagnostic and prognostic models developed by external parties. An attempt to develop an extensible condition monitoring software lead to the creation of an ISO 13374/OSA-CBM based system named BUDS, which focuses on vibration condition monitoring. Research into condition monitoring data management strategies led our team to implement a database to support the data-driven application. A database based on the MIMOSA OSA-EAI database specification was used to store asset and sensor location, measurement event, raw sensor and processed signal data. This paper investigates the use of the MIMOSA OSA-EAI database for condition monitoring systems, and presents several issues encountered during the development process.

SNOMED RT: a reference terminology for health care

Article

Full-text available

Feb 1997

We describe the framework for SNOMED RT (Reference Terminology), designed to complement the broad coverage of medical concepts in SNOMED with a set of enhanced features that significantly increases its value as a reference terminology for representing clinical data. We describe what is meant by a reference terminology, and differentiate SNOMED RT from specialized terminologies that enable user interfaces, electronic messaging, or natural language processing, as well as from other specialized reference terminologies whose primary purpose is for representing data that is not primarily clinical in nature. We then describe how SNOMED RT represents multiple hierarchies and incorporates description logic. We believe that such a comprehensive set of concepts at multiple levels of granularity, with multiple logic-based subsumption hierarchies can meet the requirements of a reference terminology for health care.

OWL 2 Web Ontology Language: Profiles

Technical Report

Oct 2009

Closed-Loop Life Cycle Management Concept for Lightweight Solutions

Conference Paper

Jan 2013

Lightweighting is the point of interest especially for automotive and aerospace industries. Wrought aluminum alloys have great potential in lightweighting. There is a need to increase post-consumer recycling and use of recycled aluminum in high-end structural components to exploit the full potential of wrought aluminum alloys. Closed-loop product life cycle management (PLM) may enable to increase the recycling of wrought aluminum alloys by providing essential information about the individual parts. Considering separate life cycle phases, products and processes may seem environmentally friendly, but it is not possible to be sure unless the entire life cycle is taken into account. LCA and LCC are scientific investigative processes which take into account entire life cycle of the products and help decision makers to evaluate between alternatives in product development. The work. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2013.

The GALEN ontology

Article

Jan 1996

A multi-objective evolutionary algorithm for EOL product recovery optimization: Turbocharger case study

Article

Sep 2007

Recently, the importance of the end-of-life (EOL) product recovery process has been rising since the return rate of products is increasing due to strict environmental regulations on products and economic reasons. In addition to this, the advent of emerging product identification technologies makes product lifecycle data visible at EOL phase. In this regard, the optimization of product recovery processes becomes highlighted as a challenging issue of EOL. At the inspection phase after disassembly, each part can have various EOL recovery options such as re-use, remanufacturing, and disposal. Depending on the selected EOL options of parts, the recovery value of an EOL product will be different. Hence, it is essential to develop a decision-making method that can select the best EOL options of parts for maximizing the recovery value of an EOL product. Although some previous works have focused on improving EOL operations, there has been a lack of research which dealt with EOL product recovery optimization in a quantitative manner. To cope with this limitation, in this study, we focus on a selection problem of EOL product recovery options for a turbocharger case, for maximizing its recovery value which includes both recovery cost and quality. To solve the problem efficiently, we develop a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA). To show the effectiveness of our algorithm, we carry out computational experiments.

Function performance evaluation and its application for design modification based on product usage data

Article

Feb 2009

In this study, we propose a new method to analyse newly gathered data for product design improvement. The proposed method provides the transformation from usage data gathered in the middle-of-life (MOL) phase to information for design improvement in the beginning-of-life (BOL) phase. To this end, we first define function performance, function performance degradation and the behaviour of function performance degradation changed during MOL. The proposed definitions help product design engineers to understand components/parts' working status during the usage period of a product. Based on the evaluation of components/parts' working status, critical components/parts can be discriminated. For the found critical components/ parts, their working status are examined and correlated with field data which consist of operational and environmental data. The correlation provides the engineers with critical field data which have main effects on the worse working status of products. To verify our method, we have carried out a locomotive case study.

Ontology-based data integration and decision support for product e-Design

Article

Dec 2009
ROBOT CIM-INT MANUF

Currently, computer-based support tools are widely used to facilitate the design process and have the potential to reduce design time, decrease product cost and enhance product quality. Although there are promising information systems to manage product lifecycle and product-related data, including product data management (PDM) and product lifecycle management (PLM), significant limitations still exist, where information required to make decisions may not be available, may be lacking consistency, and may not be expressed in a general way for sharing between systems. Moreover, there remains little support for decision making that considers multiple complex technical and economical criteria, relations, and objectives in product design. To address these problems, this paper presents a framework for an ontology-based data integration and decision support environment for e-Design. The framework can guide designers in the design process, can make recommendations, and can provide decision support for parameter adjustments.

Towards the ontology-based consolidation of production-centric standards

Article

Oct 2011

Production-centric international standards are intended to serve as an important route towards information sharing across manufacturing decision support systems. As a consequence of the textual-based definitions of the 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 that 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 explored. An important finding regarding these two methods is that while an OWL-based approach shows capabilities towards applications that may require flexible hierarchies of concepts, a CL-based method represents a favoured contender for scoped and facts-driven manufacturing applications.

Heuristic algorithms for minimising total recovery cost of end-of-life products under quality constraints

Article

Jan 2011

Recently, the optimisation of end-of-life (EOL) product recovery processes has been highlighted. At the inspection phase after disassembly, each part can have various recovery options such as reuse, reconditioning, remanufacturing, and disposal. Depending on the selected options of parts, the values of recovered products that are made by reassembling parts will be different. Hence, it is important to decide appropriate recovery options of parts at the treatment of EOL products, in order to maximise the values of recovered products. To this end, this study deals with a decision making problem to select the best recovery options of parts for minimising the total recovery cost of products under quality constraints. This problem is formulated with a mixed integer nonlinear programming model and heuristic search algorithms are proposed to resolve it. A case study for a turbocharger product is introduced with computational experiments of the proposed algorithms.

ISO 15926 "Life Cycle Data for Process Plant": an Overview

Article

Jul 2005

David Leal

This paper explains why ISO 15926 "Life Cycle Data for Process Plant" has been developed and its relationship to the STEP (ISO 10303) standard for engineering data exchange. The use of the "4D approach" to the representation of change is described. It is shown that this approach allows a representation of engineering information using first order logic, and hence that ISO 15926 can be represented using RDF/OWL.

Improving the interoperability of industrial information systems with description logic-based models—The state of the art

Article

Jun 2013
COMPUT IND

Semantic technologies that have arisen with web development have brought out new tools, concepts, and methodologies which are increasingly employed in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) applications. This paper proposes a literature review of papers related to ontologies in the area of product lifecycle management. However, it only focuses on inference ontologies, i.e. ontologies that enable reasoning, for instance, models expressed in the Web Ontology Language (OWL). The goals of this paper are to explore the field of such applications, to figure out the advantages of inference ontologies in a PLM context and to synthesize major existing inference models in terms of methodology and structuration. Finally, this paper proposes several research perspectives.

Taisch, M.: Sustainable manufacturing: trends and research challenges. Prod. Plan. Control 23, 83-104

Article

Feb 2012
PROD PLAN CONTROL

Sustainability is and will be a crucial issue for the present and future generations. The current assumption that natural resources are infinite and that the regenerative capacity of the environment is able to compensate for all human action is no longer acceptable. Hence, sustainability issues will influence all organisational aspects of the human life, from the economical, political, social and environmental points of view. The reason is simple: until now, all human activities have been based on the paradigm of unlimited resources and unlimited world's capacity for regeneration; from now on, the awareness of the termination of this assumption means that all related behavioural models must be changed. This is a very impressive objective embracing all fields of culture, economy, technology and much more. A continuing effort, together with a reasonable time span, will be required to pursue this goal. Fortunately, nature and the environment are capable of self-regulation and will give man a chance to recover from the damage he is causing to the earth mother, provided that the will to do so is firmly established. Manufacturing, as the main pillar of the civilised lifestyle, will be strongly affected by the sustainability issues and it will play an important role in establishing a sustainable way ahead. Today, nearly all manufacturing models are based on the old paradigm. Technology, on which the manufacturing is largely based, is asked, together with culture and economy, to give the tools and options for building new solutions towards a sustainable manufacturing concept. Generally speaking, new technology, new business models and new lifestyle models will be the cornerstones of the new sustainable world and this will be particularly true for what concerns the manufacturing sector. Impressive constraints and requirements will affect the industrial sector on the way ahead towards sustainability. Research and development will play a crucial role to this concern, having the responsibility to offer appropriate options to the society for answering the above-mentioned needs. The main evidences on researches challenges expected for sustainable manufacturing are outlined by the authors that have been involved in the IMS international project ‘IMS2020: Supporting Global Research for IMS2020 Vision’, promoted by the European Commission to prepare a roadmap for future (2020) manufacturing research.

Iterative approach to operation selection and sequencing in process planning

Article

Nov 2004

This paper considers the problem of selecting and sequencing operations in process planning for the objective of minimizing the sum of operation processing costs and machine, set-up and tool change costs. The main constraint is the precedence relations among operations. To represent the precedence relations and alternative operations, a tree-structured precedence graph is suggested. Based on the graph, the entire problem is decomposed into two subproblems: operation selection and operation sequencing. Then, three iterative algorithms are suggested that solve the two subproblems iteratively until optimal and near-optimal solutions are obtained. The algorithms are illustrated using an example part, and to show the performances of the algorithms, computational experiments were done on randomly generated test problems. The results show that the algorithms suggested work well for the test problems.

Developing manufacturing ontologies for knowledge reuse in distributed manufacturing environment

Article

Jan 2011

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.

Research issues on product lifecycle management and information tracking using smart embedded systems

Article

Jul 2003
ADV ENG INFORM

PROMISE will develop appropriate technology, including productlifecycle models, productembeddedinformation devices with associated firmware and software components and tools for decision making based on data gathered through a productlifecycle. This is done to enable and exploit the seamless flow, tracing and updating of information about a product, after its delivery to the customer and up to its final destiny (deregistration, decommissioning) and back to the designer and producer. The breakthrough contribution of PROMISE, in the long term, is to allow information flow management to go beyond the customer, to close the productlifecycleinformation loops, and to enable the seamless e-transformation of productlifecycleinformation to knowledge. The PROMISE R&D implementation plan includes fundamental and applied research activities in the disciplines of informationsystems modelling, smartembeddedsystems, short and long distance wireless communication technologies, data management and modelling, design for X and adaptive production management for beginning of life (BOL), statistical methods for predictive maintenance for middle of life (MOL) and planning and management of product end of life (EOL). After a general description of the PROMISE project, we present an example of the issues to be addressed in it. It consists of defining a data structure for recording maintainability data during the maintenance operations in order to use them in design for maintainability.

Multicriteria decision-aid approach for product end-of-life alternative selection

Article

Aug 2004
INT J PROD RES

The selection of the best compromise alternative for treating a product at its end of life (EOL) is presented. Each EOL alternative has its own consequences from an economical, environmental and social point of view. The criteria used to determine these consequences are often contradictory and not equally important. In the presence of multiple conflicting criteria, an optimal EOL alternative rarely exists. Hence, the decision-maker should seek the best compromise EOL alternative. The present paper proposes a multicriteria decision-aid (MCDA) approach to aid the decision-maker in selecting the best compromise EOL alternative on the basis of his/her preferences and the performances of EOL alternatives with respect to the relevant environmental, social and economic criteria. This approach is important because it allows the user to consider various conflicting criteria simultaneously and it takes into account his/her preferences. The paper analyses the most important aspects of this approach such as the constitution of a set of EOL alternatives, the selection of a list of relevant criteria to evaluate the EOL alternatives and the choice of an appropriate multicriteria decision-aid method. A case study is provided to illustrate how the proposed approach can be used for product EOL alternative selection in real-world applications.

The configuration of design and manufacture knowledge models from a heavyweight ontological foundation

Article

Aug 2011

Problems related to knowledge sharing in design and manufacture, for supporting automated decision-making procedures, are associated with the inability to communicate the full meaning of concepts and their intent within and across system boundaries. To remedy these issues, it is important that the explicit structuring of semantics, i.e. meaning in computation form, is first performed and that these semantics become sharable across systems. This paper proposes an expressive (heavyweight) Common Logic-based ontological foundation as a basis for capturing the meaning of generic feature-oriented design and manufacture concepts. This ontological foundation serves as a semantic ground over which design and manufacture knowledge models can be configured in an integrity-driven way. The implications involved in the specification of the ontological foundation are discussed alongside the types of mechanisms that allow knowledge models to be configured. A test case scenario is then analysed in order to further support and verify the researched approach.

Exploring Semantic Web technologies for ontology-based modeling in collaborative engineering design

Article

Apr 2008

This paper describes a preliminary attempt at using the Semantic Web paradigm, particularly the Web Ontology Language (OWL), for domain-specific engineering design knowledge representation in a multi-agent distributed design environment. Ontology-based modeling to the engineering design knowledge on the Semantic Web is proposed as a prelude to the meaningful agent communication and knowledge reuse for collaborative work among multidisciplinary organizations. Formal knowledge representation in OWL format extends traditional product modeling with capabilities of knowledge sharing and distributed problem solving, and is used as a content language within the FIPA-ACL (Agent Communication Language) messages in the proposed multi-agent system architecture. As an illustration, engineering design knowledge of automatic assembly systems for manufacturing electronic connectors, which contain a group of electro-mechanical components, is represented in OWL format, with its inherent structure-function-process relationships defined explicitly and formally, to facilitate semantic access and retrieval of electro-mechanical component information across different disciplines. The proposed approach is viewed as a promising knowledge-management method that facilitates the implementation of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) in design of Semantic Web applications.

Predictive algorithm to determine the suitable time to change automotive engine oil

Article

Dec 2006
COMPUT IND ENG

Recently, emerging technologies related to various sensors, product identification, and wireless communication give us new opportunities for improving the efficiency of automotive maintenance operations, in particular, implementing predictive maintenance. The key point of predictive maintenance is to develop an algorithm that can analyze degradation status of automotive and make predictive maintenance decisions. In this study, as a basis for implementing the predictive maintenance of automotive engine oil, we propose an algorithm to determine the suitable change time of automotive engine oil by analyzing its degradation status with mission profile data. For this, we use several statistical methods such as factor analysis, discriminant and classification analysis, and regression analysis. We identify main factors of mission profile and engine oil quality with factor analysis. Subsequently, with regression analysis, we specify relations between main factors considering the types of mission profile of automotive: urban-mode and highway-mode. Based on them, we determine the proper change time of engine oil through discriminant and classification analysis. To evaluate the proposed approach, we carry out a case study and have discussion about limitations of our approach.

An ontology-based approach to knowledge management in design processes

Article

Jan 2008
COMPUT CHEM ENG

Engineering design processes comprise highly creative and knowledge-intensive tasks that involve extensive information exchange and communication among distributed teams. In such dynamic settings, traditional information management systems fail to provide adequate support due to their inflexible data structures and hard-wired usage procedures, as well as their restricted ability to integrate process and product information. In this paper, we advocate the idea of Process Data Warehousing as a means to provide a knowledge management and integration platform for such design processes. The key idea behind our approach is a flexible ontology-based schema with formally defined semantics that enables the capture and reuse of design experience, supported by advanced computer science methods.

Closed-Loop PLM for intelligent products in the era of the Internet-Of-Things

Article

May 2011
COMPUT AIDED DESIGN

Dimitris Kiritsis

With the advent of the information and related emerging technologies, such as RFID, small size sensors and sensor networks or, more generally, product embedded information devices (PEID), a new generation of products called smart or intelligent products is available in the market.Although various definitions of intelligent products have been proposed, we introduce a new definition of the notion of Intelligent Product inspired by what happens in nature with us as human beings and the way we develop intelligence and knowledge. We see an intelligent product as a product system which contains sensing, memory, data processing, reasoning and communication capabilities at four intelligence levels. This future generations of Intelligent Products will need new Product Data Technologies allowing the seamless interoperability of systems and exchange of not only Static but of Dynamic Product Data as well. Actual standards for PDT cover only lowest intelligence of today’s products. In this context, we try to shape the actual state and a possible future of the Product Data Technologies from a Closed-Loop Product Lifecycle Management (C-L PLM) perspective.Our approach is founded in recent findings of the FP6 IP 507100 project PROMISE and follow-up research work. Standards of the STEP family, covering the product lifecycle to a certain extend (PLCS) as well as MIMOSA and ISO 15926 are discussed together with more recent technologies for the management of ID and sensor data such as EPCglobal, OGC-SWE and relevant PROMISE propositions for standards.Finally, the first efforts towards ontology based semantic standards for product lifecycle management and associated knowledge management and sharing are presented and discussed.

An upper ontology based on ISO 15926

Article

May 2007
COMPUT CHEM ENG

Ontologies reflect our view of what exists, and developing ontologies for a given domain requires a common context. This context can be characterized explicitly by means of an upper ontology. Upper ontologies define top-level concepts such as physical objects, activities, mereological and topological relations from which more specific classes and relations can be defined. As an effort to support the development of domain ontologies, we are developing an OWL ontology based on the ISO 15926 standard. This paper introduces the key aspects of the ontology, describes some of its main classes and properties and discusses its benefits and applications in the process engineering domain.

Applying Semantic Web Technology to the Life Cycle Support of Complex Engineering Assets

Conference Paper

Jan 2004
Lect Notes Comput Sci

Complex engineering assets, such as ships and aircraft, are designed to be in-service for many years. Over its life, the support of such an asset costs an organization many times more than the original cost of the asset itself. An industry/government initiative has resulted in an International Standard information model aimed at satisfying three significant business requirements for owners of these assets: 1) reducing the cost of total ownership of such assets, 2) protecting the investment in produce data through life, and 3) increasing the use of the asset to deliver enhanced business performance. This standard, called Product Life Cycle Support (PLCS), defines a domain-specific, but flexible, information model designed to be tailored by using organizations through the use of Reference Data. This paper describes the approach used to take advantage of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) in the definition of Reference Data and how it is being applied in pilot projects. The use of Semantic Web technology for Reference Data is a first step towards the application of that technology in the Life Cycle Support domain. The relationship between the information model, and its modelling language called EXPRESS, and OWL is also explored.

A primitive ontology model for product lifecycle meta data in the closed-loop PLM

Conference Paper

Jan 2007

In the closed-loop product lifecycle management (PLM) which allows all lifecycle actors of the whole product lifecycle to access, manage, and control product related information with emerging technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID) and wireless communication, it is prerequisite to share and exchange the product lifecycle data and information among lifecycle actors, smart products, and a PLM system. To this end, common semantics for product lifecycle meta data are required. In this regard, the ontology model for product lifecycle meta data can play a major role in supporting the sharing of product lifecycle data and information during whole product lifecycle. It can facilitate the communication among lifecycle actors, smart products, and a PLM system. For this purpose, in this study, we propose a primitive ontology model for product lifecycle meta data in the closed-loop PLM. For this, first, we clarify what the product lifecycle data is. We then design the structure of meta data that describes contents of product lifecycle data. Subsequently, we build up a primitive ontology for product lifecycle meta data in resource description framework (RDF) and have discussion about pros and cons of the proposed model.

Against Idiosyncrasy in Ontology Development.

Conference Paper

Jan 2006

Barry Smith

The world of ontology development is full of mysteries. Recently, ISO Standard 15926 ("Lifecycle Integration of Process Plant Data Including Oil and Gas Production Facilities"), a data model initially designed to support the inte- gration and handover of large engineering artefacts, has been proposed by its principal custodian for general use as an upper level ontology. As we shall discover, ISO 15926 is, when examined in light of this proposal, marked by a series of quite astonishing defects, which may however provide general lessons for the developers of ontologies in the future.

The Instance Store: DL Reasoning with Large Numbers of Individuals.

Conference Paper

Jan 2004

We present an application ñ the Instance Store ñ aimed at solving some of the scala- bility problems that arise when reasoning with the large numbers of individuals envisaged in the semantic web. The approach uses well-known techniques for reducing description logic reasoning with individuals to reasoning with concepts. Crucial to the implementa- tion is the combination of a description logic terminological reasoner with a traditional relational database. The resulting form of inference, although specialised, is sound and complete and sufcient for several interesting applications. Most importantly, the appli- cation scales to sizes (over 100,000s individuals) where all other existing applications fail. This claim is substantiated by a detailed empirical evaluation of the Instance Store in contrast with existing alternative approaches.

An ontology-based approach for Product Lifecycle Management

Article

Oct 2010
COMPUT IND

Ontologies are rapidly becoming popular in various research fields. There is a tendency both in converting existing models into ontologies and in creating new models. In this work we are focusing on Closed-Loop Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) models. An ontology model of a Product Data and Knowledge Management Semantic Object Model for PLM has been developed, with the aim of implementing ontology advantages and features into the model. An initial effort of developing the model into an ontology using Web Ontology Language-Description Logic (OWL-DL) is described in detail and the background and the motives for converting existing PLM models to ontologies is provided. The new model facilitates several of the OWL-DL capabilities, while maintaining previously achieved characteristics. Furthermore, a case study is presented based on application scenarios on the automotive industry. This case study deals with data integration and interoperability problems, in which a significant number of reasoning capabilities is implemented.

UbiDM: A new paradigm for product design and manufacturing via ubiquitous computing technology

Article

Jul 2008

Since ubiquitous technology was introduced in the early 1980s, it has rapidly developed, and been applied to various domains mainly for the improvement of human life. In this article, the authors propose that ubiquitous computing technology can be effectively used for the design and manufacturing of a product by proposing a new paradigm, called UbiDM® (Design and Manufacture via Ubiquitous Computing Technology). The key aspect of UbiDM is the utilisation of the entire product lifecycle information obtained via ubiquitous computing technology for the design and manufacture of the product. The new paradigm can solve many of the problems that have not been properly handled by previous manufacturing paradigms. Specifically, it will address the concept of UbiDM by the following aspects: (1) why there is a need for UbiDM; (2) the essence of UbiDM; (3) enabling technologies; (4) application area; (5) worldwide R&D status; and (6) the societal impacts of UbiDM.

The National Cancer Institute’s Thésaurus and Ontology

Article

Dec 2003
J WEB SEMANT

this paper will describe the terminology development process at NCI, and the issues associated with converting a description logic based nomenclature to a semantically rich OWL ontology

Understanding and Using Context

Article

Feb 2001

Anind K. Dey

Context is a poorly used source of information in our computing environments. As a result, we have an impoverished understanding of what context is and how it can be used. In this paper, we provide an operational definition of context and discuss the different ways in which context can be used by context-aware applications. We also present the Context Toolkit, an architecture that supports the building of these context-aware applications. We discuss the features and abstractions in the toolkit that make the task of building applications easier. Finally, we introduce a new abstraction, a situation which we believe will provide additional support to application designers.

An Ontology-Based Approach for Closed-Loop Product Lifecycle Management

Article

Jan 2010

Aristeidis Matsokis

The main goal of the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the management of all the data associated to a product during its lifecycle. Lifecycle data is being generated by events and actions (of various lifecycle agents which are humans and/or software systems) and it is distributed along the product's lifecycle phases: Beginning of Life (BOL) including design and manufacturing, Middle of Life (MOL) including usage and maintenance and End of Life (EOL) including recycling, disposal or other options. Closed-Loop PLM extends the meaning of PLM in order to close the loop of the information among the different lifecycle phases. The idea is that information of MOL could be used at the EOL stage to support deciding the most appropriate EOL option (especially to make decision for re-manufacturing and re-use) and combined with the EOL information it could be used as feedback in the BOL for improving the new generations of the product. Several PLM models have been developed utilising various technologies and methods towards providing aspects of the Closed-Loop PLM concept. Ontologies are rapidly becoming popular in various research fields. There is a tendency both in converting existing models into ontology-based models, and in creating new ontology-based models from scratch. The aim of this dissertation is to include the advantages and features provided by the ontologies into PLM models towards achieving Closed-Loop PLM. Hence, an ontology model of a Product Data and Knowledge Management Semantic Object Model for PLM has been developed. The transformation process of the model into an ontology-based one, using Web Ontology Language-Description Logic (OWL-DL), is described in detail. The background and the motives for converting existing PLM models to ontologies are also provided. The new model facilitates several of the OWL-DL capabilities, while maintaining previously achieved characteristics. Furthermore, case studies based on various application scenarios, are presented. These case studies deal with data integration and interoperability problems, in which a significant number of reasoning capabilities is implemented, and highlight the utilisation of the developed model. Moreover, in this work, a generic concept has been developed, tackling the time treatment in PLM models. Time is the only fundamental dimension which exists along the entire life of an artefact and it affects all artefacts and their qualities. Most commonly in PLM models, time is an attribute in parts such as "activities" and "events" or is a separate part of the model ("four dimensional models"). In this work the concept is that time should not be one part of the model, but it should be the basis of the model, and all other elements should be parts of it. Thus, we introduce the "Duration of Time concept". According to this concept all aspects and elements of a model are parts of time. Case studies demonstrate the applicability and the advantages of the concept in comparison to existing methodologies.

SWRL: A semantic web rule language combining oWL and ruleML

Article

Jan 2007

This document contains a proposal for a Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) based on a combination of the OWL DL and OWL Lite sublanguages of the OWL Web Ontology Language with the Unary/Binary Datalog RuleML sublanguages of the Rule Markup Language. SWRL includes a high-level abstract syntax for Horn-like rules in both the OWL DL and OWL Lite sublanguages of OWL. A model-theoretic semantics is given to provide the formal meaning for OWL ontologies including rules written in this abstract syntax. An XML syntax based on RuleML and the OWL XML Presentation Syntax as well as an RDF concrete syntax based on the OWL RDF/XML exchange syntax are also given, along with several examples. Ce document propose un langage, SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language ou langage de règles du Web sémantique), basé sur une combinaison des sous langages OWL DL et OWL Lite du langage ontologique Web OWL, avec les sous langages Datalog RuleML unaire/binaire du langage Rule Markup Language. SWRL intègre une syntaxe abstraite de haut niveau pour les règles de Horn dans les sous langages OWL DL et OWL Lite de OWL. Un modèle sémantique théorique permettant d'établir la signification formelle des ontologies OWL, y compris des règles rédigées dans cette syntaxe abstraite, est présenté. Une syntaxe XML basée sur RuleML et la syntaxe de présentation de OWL XML, ainsi qu'une syntaxe RDF concrète basée sur la syntaxe d'échange de OWL RDF/XML sont également proposées, avec plusieurs exemples.

The UMLS® project: Making the conceptual connection between users and the information they need

Article

May 1993
Bull Med Libr Assoc

Conceptual connections between users and information sources depend on an accurate representation of the content of available information sources, an accurate representation of specific user information needs, and the ability to match the two. Establishing such connections is a principal function of medical librarians. The goal of the National Library of Medicine's Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) project is to facilitate the development of conceptual connections between users and relevant machine-readable information. The UMLS model involves a combination of three centrally developed Knowledge Sources (a Metathesaurus, a Semantic Network, and an Information Sources Map) and a variety of smart interface programs that make use of these Knowledge Sources to help users in different environments find machine-readable information relevant to their particular practice or research problems. The third experimental edition of the UMLS Knowledge Sources was issued in the fall of 1992. Current priorities for the UMLS project include developing applications that make use of the Knowledge Sources and using feedback from these applications to guide ongoing enhancement and expansion of the Knowledge Sources. Medical librarians are involved heavily in the direction of the UMLS project, in the development of the Knowledge Sources, and in their experimental application. The involvement of librarians in reviewing, testing, and providing feedback on UMLS products will increase the likelihood that the UMLS project will achieve its goal of improving access to machine-readable biomedical information.

Investigating subsumption in SNOMED CT: An exploration into large description logic-based biomedical terminologies

Article

Apr 2007
ARTIF INTELL MED

Formalisms based on one or other flavor of description logic (DL) are sometimes put forward as helping to ensure that terminologies and controlled vocabularies comply with sound ontological principles. The objective of this paper is to study the degree to which one DL-based biomedical terminology (SNOMED CT) does indeed comply with such principles. We defined seven ontological principles (for example: each class must have at least one parent, each class must differ from its parent) and examined the properties of SNOMED CT classes with respect to these principles. Our major results are 31% of these classes have a single child; 27% have multiple parents; 51% do not exhibit any differentiae between the description of the parent and that of the child. The applications of this principles to quality assurance for ontologies are discussed and suggestions are made for dealing with the phenomenon of multiple inheritance. The advantages and limitations of our approach are also discussed.