António Monteiro

MENTOR — A methodology for enterprise reference ontology development

Ontologies facilitate the computational understanding, communication and seamless interoperability between people and organizations. They allow key concepts and terms relevant to a given domain to be identified and defined in an open and unambiguous way. Therefore, ontologies facilitate the use and exchange of data, information, and knowledge among people and organizations, towards intelligent systems interoperability. Tasks on distributed and heterogeneous systems demand support from more than one ontology. Multiple ontologies need to be accessed by the same, but also different systems. The distributed nature of ontology development has led to dissimilar ontologies for the same or overlapping domains. Thus, various parties with different ontologies often do not understand each other. To solve these problems, it is necessary to use ontology mapping geared for interoperability. This paper proposes a methodology to support the development of a common reference ontology for a group of enterprises sharing a business domain. This methodology is based on the concept of Mediator Ontology (MO), which assists the semantic transformations among each enterprisepsilas ontology and the referential one. The MO enables each organization to keep its own terminology, glossary and ontological structures, providing seamless communication and interaction with the others. A use case is described and the proposed methodology demonstrated.

Heat Transfer Simulation in the Mold With Generalized Curvilinear Formulation

The production of a part by foundry techniques is influenced by its complex geometry configuration, which affects the solidification conditions and subsequent cooling. For example certain pipes, some vessels and most valves are produced by casting. To model the solidification of the complex shapes such as valves is difficult if Cartesian coordinates are used. Even simpler parts like pipes may become difficult to model because they usually are not orthogonally ruled shapes. The main objective of this paper is to describe the development of a finite volume method intended to simulate the heat transfer phenomena during the phase change process. Because of the mold design complexity, the finite volume is described using the generalized curvilinear formulation.

Product Lifecycle Management Enhancement With an Ontological Approach

Recently, computational design aiding tools resources are undertaken in modern companies, enhancing high quality product definition development. However, accurate digital product descriptions are attained through multiple software applications, each one seeking to solve focused needs. Regardless significant advances, there still remains a substantial computational deficiency in how these systems interact with each other between the several PLC stages. Plural issues with different origin and nature contribute to such state, increasing the research community interest to contribute with solution that minimizes the problem. In particular, one main issue refers to product and process knowledge exchange along PLC stages. According to this scenario, and with market pressure to increase profits and reduce redundancies, an efficient coordination and management of all the activities taking place along the Production Process must be performed. Hence, promising technologies of Product Lifecycle Management are considered strategic to manage capture of product knowledge along its life, from initial conception to retirement. This paper proposes the use of an ontology to be used in a knowledge-based system, giving support to a comprehensive product model to improve integration and data exchange capabilities trough entire PLC. The capture, handle and re-use of knowledge from multiple disciplines during PLC (e.g. design, manufacture or maintenance), extending capabilities of existent product and process models is the promising main benefit of ontologies development.© 2005 ASME

An Algorithm to Recognize Shape and Position of Basic Functional Geometries Obtained by Manufacturing: An Optimization of Grid Increment

The development of automated measurement systems for monitoring basic functional geometries arises as a response to the increasing automation of manufacture. The paper describes the optimization of the grid increment to be used in the algorithm established by the authors to automatically recognize 3D geometries. Differential geometry was used to determine Gaussian and mean local curvatures of surfaces described by ordered cloud point representation, considered the fundamental conditions for the decision of geometric shapes automatic identification. A case study for spherical surfaces is shown, relating the grid increment with the values of the sphere attributes. The optimization of the increment appears to minimize the uncertainty of the algorithm. The results validated the suitability of the algorithm hereby proposed.

Seamless Information Integration in Network Enterprises Using MENTOR: Development of a Reference Ontology in Metrological Domain

Manufacturing teams face the challenge of integration and reuse of computational information systems and knowledge. Ontologies constitute a set of concepts, axioms and relationships describing a domain of interest. The distributed and heterogeneous nature of the organizations, in particular networked enterprises, led to the development of different ontologies for the same or overlapping areas, resulting in non-interoperability. This has become the basis for research methodologies to support a reference ontology, contributing to the standardization and development of ontologies within enterprises and virtual network, providing interoperability properties to intelligent systems. This paper extends the MENTOR methodology to support the development of reference ontology in the field of metrology. The aim is to maintain the different ontologies of each partner, providing networked enterprises with coherent interaction and unambiguous communication. A case study in the field of metrology is presented and the proposed methodology is demonstrated.

Framework for Enhanced Interoperability

Today, enterprises have information technology that could fulfill their requirements in each operational phase and with external partners, e.g., suppliers. For instance, in industrial environment, many applications are available to support operating their Product Life Cycle stages. However, organizations typically acquire them aiming to solve focused needs, without an overall view of the global enterprise’s system integration. Even when enterprise models are interoperable, very often difficulties arise with respect to data semantics when information has to be exchanged, though common semantic models are not in place. Researchers have proposed methodologies and platforms to assist the integration of applications and data. However, implementing new technology in organizations is a complex task, and the advent of continuous technological evolution makes organizations unable to be constantly updated. Such dynamics has a recognized impact in costs and work environment that companies cannot afford, and most of such proposals do not go beyond the research phase. This chapter proposes a methodology to enhance enterprise’s interoperability, keeping the same organization’s technical and operational environment, improving its methods of work and the usability of the installed technology through ontological harmonization of the enterprise product models in use. The presented work was developed and has been applied in the scope of the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) SMART-fm program (www.ims.org) and European ATHENA project (www.athena-ip.org), under real industrial environments.

Ontological harmonization of enterprise product models: an experimented scenario

Today, the industrial environment is plenty populated with applications helping to support its multiple product life cycle stages. However, organizations typically acquire them aiming to solve focused needs, without an overall view of the global enterprises system integration. Additionally, implementing new technology in organizations is a complex task, and the advent of continuous technological evolution makes organizations unable to be constantly updated. Such dynamics has a recognized impact in costs and work environment that companies cannot afford, and most of such proposals do not go beyond the research phase. This paper synthesizes research the authors have been developed in the area of intelligent interoperability and ontology, proposing a methodology for enterprises interoperability enhancement, keeping the same organizations technical and operational environment, improving its methods of work and making better the usability of the installed technology through ontological harmonization of the enterprise product models in use

Make the Most of Interoperability Along Product Life Cycle Stages: A Framework Based on Multilevel Integration

Within the globally scaled economy and markets, the production process is re-emerging as the value-creator activity and the main source of enterprise revenues. The worldwide growing market contributes to the increase of customers’ exigencies, in terms of both quality and delivery times. Therefore, the product itself is becoming more complex as a combination of physical components and services, and the production process conceptualization is changing, starting from market understanding, through product and process design, to operations and distribution management, often exceeding the boundaries of a single organization. According to this scenario, the activities performed along the production process should be effectively coordinated and managed within the organization and with the external partners. To accomplish it, production must converge to a single global integrated process, enabled by seamless interoperability between the already operating tools, methods and computational environments. A challenge now is how to make the most of information and knowledge interoperability along the Product Life Cycle stages. The paper contributes to this aim, proposing a standard-based methodology to re-use data and knowledge incorporated in the product models, to support collaborative engineering through a modular multilevel architecture.Copyright