An ontology-based semantic foundation for flexible manufacturing systems

The aim of this manuscript is to present an ontology-based knowledge representation for flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), providing a comprehensive semantic foundation of the facility. Domain ontology model is addressed that captures and formally represents the manufacturing semantics from heterogeneous data sources allowing knowledge sharing, re-use and update. Reported semantic foundation enables the plant operations to become knowledge intensive, distributed and collaborative in nature. It enables knowledge management among various design tools and knowledge exchange in an adaptive operation environment through decision support applications. A framework for such a knowledge-based optimization support system is also proposed. A practical FMS use case is considered as an illustrative example in this work.