João Sarraipa

Ontology-Based Framework for Enhanced Interoperability in Networked Industrial Environments

Nowadays, the advent of networked production environments has conducted to increase the number of heterogeneous systems that a manufacturer has to manage. These needs have resulted in major semantic accuracy difficulties when exchanging and integrating information. A normalised representation of the semantics associated with the product and processes, has been identified by the research community as a key to solve the problem. This paper contributes describing a method to develop a harmonized taxonomy in adoption by the furniture industry, prepared using a framework to improve the interoperability of systems within the Product Life Cycle. The proposed platform is based in a standard-based meta-model description assisted by an on-line normalised ontology platform, using state of the art technology for Internet enabled services and data access. The paper reflects major research results from two international projects.

Collaborative production using dynamic manufacturing networks for SME's

Frequently, in order to remain competitive with big corporations, small companies have the need to be more dynamic, adapt to new business situations, react faster, and therefore survive in todays global economy. To achieve that, SMEs normally seek to create consortiums, thus gaining access to new and more opportunities. However, this strategy may also result in different complications. One way to support this situations to enable the development of dynamic manufacturing networks through the use of common collaboration platforms. With them, SMEs can be supported in the choice of partners, and specific technical enablers provided to prevent difficulties such as interoperability issues. Software or domain adaptors are therefore proposed as the conceptual “glue” that allow companies to share their information with the platform, avoiding interoperability problems. This paper customizes and validates a platform that support the DMN creation (the IMAGINE i-platform (www.imagine-futurefactory.eu), while using service interoperability and knowledge alignment concepts to specify and describe the specific adapters required for different industrial domains.

Osmosis Process Development for Innovative Product Design and Validation

The emerging Liquid-Sensing Enterprise (LSE) concept provides to manufacturing enterprises the required enablers to modernize traditional strategies for product design and validation. The proposed osmosis processes integrates innovative processes and paradigms comprising a MDA/MDI based approach with the focus to potentiate the generation of technological innovations. These osmosis processes address the existing real, digital and virtual related data of specific products design supported by sensing assets to facilitate ready-to-run business processes, to then perform efficient product development and validation. This paper integrates model-driven techniques and runtime environments as well as novel form of information access and visualization for systems design and process development. The developments are accompanied with a real example from a manufacturing environment of engine camshafts.Copyright

Semantic enrichment of building and construction knowledge sources using a domain ontology for classification

The paper introduces a new conceptual framework for representation of knowledge sources (whether they are web pages or documents), where each knowledge source is semantically represented (within its domain of use) by a Semantic Vector (SV), which is enriched using the classical vector space model approach extended with ontological support, employing ontology concepts and their relations in the enrichment process. The test domain for the assessment of the approach is the Building and Construction, using an appropriate available Ontology. Preliminary results were collected using a clustering algorithm for document classification where documents were assigned into a pre-defined set of categories. Such results indicate that the proposed approach does improve the precision and recall of classifications.

An evaluation approach for research project pilot technological applications

In a world increasingly more competitive and in a constantly development and growth its important that companies have economic tools, like frameworks to help them to evaluate and validate the technology development to better fits in each company particular needs. The paper presents an evaluation approach for research project pilot applications to stimulate its implementation and deployment, increasing its adequacy and acceptance to their stakeholders and consequently providing new business profit and opportunities. Authors used the DECIDE evaluation framework as a major guide to this approach, which was tested in the iSURF project to support the implementation of an interoperability service utility for collaborative supply chain planning across multiple domains supported by RFID devices.