Ontology Formalization of Product Semantics for Product Lifecycle Management

Abstract

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a concept that takes into account that the development of a product is influenced by knowledge from various stakeholders throughout its lifecycle. Computing environments in the PLM framework are expected to have several independent information resources. This requires a meaningful formal representation of product data semantics throughout the product’s lifecycle. This paper presents an ontological approach to formalize product semantics into a Product Semantic Representation Language (PSRL). Building blocks to develop the explicit, extensible and comprehensive PSRL are described. The PSRL is open and based on standard W3L OWL constructs. The extensibility is demonstrated by considering an example product. The representation and the method of its development is expected to support several applications in the context of PLM. The use of OWL will enable the provision of the application software and information resources as Web services in the context of the Semantic Web.