Ontologies in Smart Manufacturing: Approaches and Research Framework

Successful implementation of smart manufacturing systems requires tight connectivity and intensive information and knowledge exchange. There is still a need for achieving certain level of smartness and beyond (i.e. cognitive manufacturing) by identifying semantic relations between heterogeneous data sources, extract actionable information and subsequently automate the process of knowledge generation and target-oriented recommendation in industrial context. The missing linkage is the quality of knowledge generation and protection process, which requires further investigation along with standard planning and controlling measures. This can be achieved through application of ontologies as a mean to support interoperability, reasoning and decision making. Considering various alternative approaches, this paper describes a research framework for ongoing study on ontology-based planning and controlling in smart manufacturing systems.