Ontology-based competence management for team configuration

When manufacturers, distributors and dealers need to collaborate, they form production networks because this provides significant advantages in production variety, flexibility and lead time. Production processes in such networks often spawn different specific tasks that are to be solved by the network members. This requires creation of a team able to tackle the identified problem. When dealing with multiple organizations and multiple processes within a complicated production network, trying to find a member that has required competence can be a laborious, time-consuming process. Developing and maintaining competence profiles of all the relevant parties associated with production can significantly reduce the time. The paper proposes an approach to team configuration based on competence profiles. The approach utilizes such technologies as ontology management, context management and profiling. Using ontological representation makes it possible to identify those team members who are best suited for the task by ontology matching.