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Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2019) 000–000
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Procedia Manufacturing 28 (2019) 174–176
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International Conference on Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual Production

InternationalEditorial: Formal
Conference on Ontologies
Changeable, meet Industry
Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual Production
Manufacturing Engineering Society International
a
Conference 2017,
b
MESIC 2017, 28-30 June
Emilio Sanfilippo , Walter Terkaj
Editorial: Formal Ontologies meet Industry
2017, Vigo (Pontevedra), Spain *
a
LS2N, 1 rue de la Noë, Nantes
Costing
b
models
Istituto di Sistemi for capacity
Emilio
e Tecnologie Industriali Intelligenti optimization
Sanfilippo
per il a
, Walter
Manifatturiero in Industry
AvanzatoTerkaj b
*
(STIIMA),Consiglio
via A.Corti, 12 - 20133 Milano, Italy
4.0:delleTrade-off
Nazionale Ricerche (CNR),

between used capacity LS2N, 1 rueand

a operational
de la Noë, Nantes efficiency
b
The Formal
Istituto di Sistemi Ontologies meet Industry
e Tecnologie Industriali Intelligenti(FOMI) workshopAvanzato
per il Manifatturiero series (STIIMA),Consiglio
is a scientific Nazionale
initiativedelle
supported by the
Ricerche (CNR),
†
International Association for Ontology aandviaits Applications
A.Corti, 12 -a,* (IAOA)
20133 Milano, baimed at bringing
Italy b together academics and
A. Santana , P. Afonso , A. Zanin , R. Wernke
practitioners interested in ontologies for industry. FOMI addresses research and application topics concerning, e.g.,
the The Formal
design Ontologies meetontologies,
of domain-specific Industry
a
University(FOMI)
theMinho,
of workshop
development series is a scientificinformation
of ontology-based
4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal initiative supported
systems, by or the
†
International of
investigation Association
the theoreticalfor Ontology
underpinnings b and its Applications (IAOA) aimed at bringing together academics and
of formal
Unochapecó, ontology
89809-000 when
Chapecó, SC,tuned
Brazil to engineering applications.
practitioners
As documented interested in literature
in the ontologies(see, for industry.
e.g., [5][7]),FOMI some addresses research
of the key and application
motivations topics concerning,
for using ontology e.g.,
in engineering
the
are: design of domain-specific ontologies, the development of ontology-based information systems, or the
investigation
 To enable of the knowledge
theoretical underpinnings
sharing across of formalhuman
multiple ontology when tuned
or software to engineering applications.
agents.
Abstract
As documented in the literature (see, e.g., [5][7]), some of the key motivations forsources.
using ontology in engineering
 To tackle semantic interoperability among computer-based systems and data
are:  To capitalize experts’ knowledge using formal axioms that are accessible to machines.
Under the
Toconcept of "Industry
enable knowledge 4.0",across
sharing production
multiple processes
human orwill be pushed
software agents.to be increasingly interconnected,
 To
information support
based onknowledge
a real time and dataand,
basis visualization.
necessarily, much more efficient. In data
this sources.
context, capacity optimization
 To To tackle
maintain semantic interoperability
a cut-off distinction among
between computer-based
(reusable) systemsknowledge
domain and and profitability
application-dependent,
goes beyond the traditional
To capitalize aim
experts’ of capacity
knowledge maximization, contributing also for organization’s
using formal axioms that are accessible to machines. and value.
Indeed, sometimes
lean managementeven proprietary,
and knowledge.
continuous improvement approaches suggest capacity optimization instead of
 To support knowledge and data visualization.
maximization. The
To maintain study of capacity
a cut-off distinctionoptimizationbetween and costing
(reusable)models is an important
domain knowledge research
andthey topic that deserves
application-dependent,
In short, from an engineering perspective, ontologies are interesting tools because represent reference
contributions from both
sometimes even the practical and
proprietary, theoretical perspectives. This paper presents and discusses a mathematical
knowledge.
knowledge models that can be shared by various systems and communities to guarantee a smooth interaction in
model for capacity management based on different costing models (ABC and TDABC). A generic model has been
tasks related to data sharing or knowledge management.
developed
In short, andfrom
it wasanused to analyze idle capacityontologies and to design arestrategies towards the maximization of organization’s
The importance of engineering
ontologies inperspective,
industry is demonstrated byinteresting
Europeantools because
and national they represent
research programmesreference
but
value.
knowledge
also The trade-off
by pastmodels capacity
that can
and ongoing maximization
be shared by
international vs operational
various such
initiatives systems efficiency
andOntology
as the is
communities highlighted and
BasedtoEngineering it is
guarantee a (OBE)shown
smoothGroupthat capacity
interaction in
[1], the
optimization
tasks related
Industrial might
to datahide
Ontologies operational
sharing
Foundry (IOF)inefficiency.
or knowledge ‡
, andmanagement.
the W3C Linked Building Data Community Group §. However, several
© 2017
TheThe
research Authors. Published
importance
priorities related tobytechnological
of ontologies Elsevier B.V. and
in industry is demonstrated
methodological by European
gaps between and national
academic research
studiesprogrammes
and industrialbut
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Manufacturing
also
practices remain to be addressed to fullyinitiatives
by past and ongoing international exploit thesuch as the
potential ontologyEngineering
ofOntology Based Society International
Engineering
engineering (OBE)
approaches andGroupConference
[1], the
technologies.
2017.
Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF)‡, and the W3C Linked Building Data Community Group §. However, several
research priorities related to technological and methodological gaps between academic studies and industrial
© 2019 The
Keywords: CostAuthors.
Models; Published
ABC; TDABC; by Elsevier
CapacityB.V. Management; Idle Capacity; Operational Efficiency
practices remain to be addressed to fully exploit the potential of ontology engineering approaches and technologies.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
* Corresponding
Peer-review author.
under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable
andE-mail address:
Virtual walter.terkaj@stiima.cnr.it
Production.
1. †Introduction
https://iaoa.org/
‡
https://sites.google.com/view/industrialontologies
* Corresponding author.
§ https://www.w3.org/community/lbd/
The cost of idle capacity is a fundamental information for companies and their management of extreme importance
E-mail address: walter.terkaj@stiima.cnr.it
†
in modern production
https://iaoa.org/ systems. In general, it is defined as unused capacity or production potential and can be measured
2351-9789
‡ © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
https://sites.google.com/view/industrialontologies
in several ways: tons of production, available hours of manufacturing, etc. The management of the idle capacity
This§ishttps://www.w3.org/community/lbd/
an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
* Paulo Afonso. Tel.: +351
Peer-review under responsibility 253of
510
the761; fax: +351
scientific 253 604of741
committee the International Conference on Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual
E-mail address: psafonso@dps.uminho.pt
Production.
2351-9789 © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
2351-9789
2351-9789 ©©under
Peer-review 2017 The
TheAuthors.
2019responsibility
Authors.Published by Elsevier
Published
of the B.V. B.V.
bycommittee
scientific Elsevier of the International Conference on Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual
Peer-review underaccess
This is an open
Production. responsibility of the scientific
article under committee oflicense
the CC BY-NC-ND the Manufacturing Engineering Society International Conference 2017.
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable
and Virtual Production.
10.1016/j.promfg.2018.12.028
 Emilio Sanfilippo et al. / Procedia Manufacturing 28 (2019) 174–176 175
2 Author name / Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2019) 000–000

Examples of such priorities concern:

 The development and (re-)use of standard and inter-connected ontologies, both upper- and domain-level
ontologies.
 A library of modelling alternatives, e.g., in the form of ontology design patterns, tuned to engineering
representational needs. The purpose is to avoid the proliferation of modelling mistakes and, therefore, to
foster the development of well-defined ontologies.
 The need of more efficient and effective software environments to support the various phases in the
lifecycle of an ontology-based software tool.
 The development of high performing reasoners, as well as mature case studies concerning the use of
reasoning inferencing mechanisms to tackle real-world problems.

In order to foster the adoption of ontology-based technologies in industrial application contexts, it is also needed
the willingness of stakeholders to collaborate with universities and research centres with an open-minded aptitude.
Ontology development is challenging because it requires a collaborative interaction between ontology engineers,
domain experts, software engineers, database managers, and data analysts. If industrial practitioners are not willing
to share their knowledge, ideas, and problems, then researchers can hardly support any advancement in the
technologies and methodologies they adopt.
For the 10th edition, FOMI was hosted by the Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual Production
(CARV) conference. For this reason, the workshop was explicitly focused on ontologies for manufacturing,
including product design, process planning, manufacturing system design, layout planning, production planning, and
maintenance. The call for paper stressed the need of ontology-based applications for factories of the future [12]
adopting Industry 4.0 enabling technologies like digital factory, cloud computing, Internet of Things, Cyber-
Physical Systems, robotics, virtual and augmented reality, among others. Also, call explicitly asked companies
working with ontology-based systems to share their experiences in developing or using ontologies.
A total of six papers have been presented at FOMI 2018. In both the academic and industrial community, we
note an interest for foundational ontologies to clarify the semantic of the represented notions, and develop domain or
application ontologies on the basis of rigorous modelling principles. Three different foundational ontologies are
used in three papers, i.e., the Descriptive Ontology for Cognitive and Linguistic Engineering (DOLCE) [9] (see [2]),
the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) [6] (see [3]), and the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) [1] (see [4]).
Benavent et al. [2] present a preliminary restructuring of the ontologies Product and Processes Development
Resource Capability (PPDRC) and Manufacturing and Inspection Resource Capability (MIRC) on the basis of
DOLCE. According to the authors, the restructuring is due to the need of spelling out clearly the basic modelling
assumptions behind both PPDRC and MIRC. An example is the distinction between roles and their bearers, which is
useful in manufacturing to model physical objects like drillers and the resource role they possibly play.
Cao et al. [3] present a core ontology, called CM-core, for condition monitoring. This work is contextualized
within the Industry 4.0 vision with the idea of using the ontology to facilitate the exchange of condition monitoring
data. Differently from existing works, CM-core is developed independently from specific application settings in
such a way to facilitate its reuse, hence to foster the interoperability of condition monitoring data and applications.
The ontology has been designed by relying on industrial standards and previously developed ontologies. Also, from
an upper-level perspective, it relies on UFO.
Mas et al. [8] discuss a preliminary ontology developed at Airbus for applications in the aerospace domain. The
presented work is framed within a model-based approach in design and manufacturing aimed at enabling the
homogeneous handling of data across multiple applications. The ontology is meant to be applied in a Product
Lifecycle Management (PLM) system to handle aerospace data through the entire product lifecycle.
Negri et al. [10] present an ontology-based approach for supporting the generation and integration of simulation
tools aimed at evaluating the performance of manufacturing systems via Discrete Event Simulation (DES). A
semantic data model is used to develop a digital twin of evolving manufacturing systems, thus enhancing the
exploitation of other digital technologies such as cloud computing and Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). The approach
is tested on lab-scale pilot plant dedicated to the assembly of mobile phones.
Schneider et al. [11] address how a domain ontology for Finite State Machine (FSM) can be exploited to
formalize knowledge about automation and control systems. Such formalization can help to support interoperability
for industrial applications, in particular in the scope of Industry 4.0. The paper shows how a domain ontology
enables a smooth conversion among different FSM formalisms while taking as a reference an industrial use case.
176 Emilio Sanfilippo et al. / Procedia Manufacturing 28 (2019) 174–176
Author name / Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2019) 000–000 3

Cheong [4] proposes a method to validate JSON by exploiting state-of-the-art ontology-based tools. The need of
such validation stems from the ever growing use of JSON format to exchange among software applications in
Industry 4.0 scenarios, particularly in the case of cloud platforms. However, this requires a challenging conversion
from JSON schemas and data to the Web Ontology Language (OWL).
Finally, Table 1 presents the FOMI 2018 papers by mapping their contents against motivations to use formal
ontologies, addressed ontology research priorities, and specific FOMI 2018 topics.

Table 1: Mapping of the FOMI 2018 papers

Paper Motivations for ontology use
Benavent et al. [2] Formal representation of engineering
knowledge; alignment with foundational
ontology
Cao et al. [3] Semantic interoperability; formal
representation of engineering
knowledge; alignment with foundational
ontology; Industry 4.0
Cheong [4] Semantic interoperability; ontology-
based software development; alignment
with foundational ontology
Mas et al. [8] Semantic interoperability; formal
representation of engineering
knowledge; ontology-based software
development
Negri et al. [10] Semantic interoperability; Industry 4.0
Schneider et al. [11] Semantic interoperability; separation of
domain knowledge from proprietary
systems
Ontology research priority
Development and use of domain
ontologies
Development and use of domain
ontologies
Management of large amount of
data
Development and use of domain
ontologies
Development and use of ontology-
based applications
Use of domain ontologies
FOMI @CARV Focus
Product design, process
planning, production planning
Maintenance of manufacturing
systems
Ontology integration with
Industry 4.0 technologies
Manufacturing system design;
manufacturing use case
Ontology integration with
Industry 4.0 technologies;
manufacturing use case
Ontology integration with
Industry 4.0 technologies;
manufacturing use case

References

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Proceedings of International Conference on Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual Production. Procedia Manufacturing
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© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Changeable, Agile,
Reconfigurable and Virtual Production.