wilamowski-b-m-irwin-j-d-industrial-communication-systems-2011

65-4 Industrial Communication Systems
In general, four aspects of multisite production can be distinguished:
• Communications refers to the basic ability to exchange information of any required form in the
collaboration process between the parties involved.
• Integratability relates to the ability of components from different sources to mesh relatively seamlessly
and the ability to integrate these components to build the final product.
• Coordination focuses on scheduling and ordering tasks performed by these parties.
• Awareness and cooperation refer to the knowledge of the production process of work being
performed, progress achieved, and decisions made by others.
The ontology-driven architecture proposed reduces conceptual and terminological confusion by
providing a unifying framework within an organization through
• The normative model, which creates a semantic for the system and an extendible model that can
later be refined and, which allows semantic transformations between different contexts from
different sites.
• The network of relationships that can keep track of progress and monitoring quality and productivity
from development teams in different locations.
• Creating consistency, it provides unambiguous definitions for terms in the production system.
• Allowing integration by providing a normative model and integration of components developed
in different places can be achieved.
The integration of a number of (existing) ontologies for other domains can be used to augment the
functionality of any framework using the base ontology. This base ontology would in general terms
overlap with the external ontologies. A distributed workflow technique across multiple sites with appropriate
shared repositories, an ability to enforce preconditions and post-conditions on development
activities and the artefacts developed, plus task tracking will assist with overall coordination. As there
are several aims that must be addressed, in what follows, we will discuss the approach taken for each of
these aims in turn.
65.3.2 Multisite Issues and Rapid Reconfigurability
The multisite issues will be addressed through the use of an ontology-based approach. The three ontologies
that have been identified as necessary are as follows:
1. A process ontology
2. A products ontology
3. A components ontology
The process ontology develops a representation of the different types of processes involved in manufacturing/construction.
Previously taxonomies for manufacturing processes have been developed by
[Holland 00] and refined by [Lastra 04]. These ideas were extended to an ontology by [Delamar 06].
These were largely relevant for mechanical production processes at a single site. Specifically they did not
include construction activities nor did they allow specification of activities at multiple different sites.
We intend to use part of the taxonomies previously developed and extend these to incorporate joint
manufacturing/construction processes as well as allow for multiple sites. The product ontology will
represent the different types of products or units that will result from the manufacturing/construction
activity. They will involve classification of the products by features as well as capturing the geometrical
layout, which is particularly important for construction. Here, the relationships involved and the layout
configurations will also have to be captured by the product ontology.
The component ontology will provide a representation of all the components involved in the manufacture/construction
activity at the different levels of granularity. As each large granularity component
is likely to consist of subcomponents itself and so on, it is important these are all represented within
© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC