Bridging the gap between product lifecycle management and sustainability in manufacturing through ontology building
Introduction
Manufacturing companies throughout the world have gradually turned their attention to sustainability matters, as a strategy for competitiveness. However, environmental regulations, such as RoHS, REACH and EuP ([1]) have enforced new specific requirements to be met. At the same time, customers are more aware of possible hazardous effects of manufacturing operations on the environment and consequently on their lives. Moreover, products that are environmentally benign have attracted more attention, for customers may prefer them amongst others. Therefore, markets, as well as regulations and self-consciousness, have driven enterprise-wide initiatives that favour environment-friendly activities. Yet, the challenge to harmonize current manufacturing practices with ongoing sustainability efforts remains. According to [2], [3], there is a strong sense of dissatisfaction among business executives and engineers, as they do not fully understand the sustainability problem while they try to apply different approaches on a trial-and-error basis.
On the other hand, companies have had to deal with an increasingly demanding exchange of information in order to cope with geographically dispersed research, development and manufacturing facilities. In addition, there has been demand for customized items, tailored to specific needs, which makes the amount of data to be handled increase exponentially. And more importantly, product lifecycle management strategies require that all phases a given product goes through, from cradle-to-grave, be integrated by means of seamless, reliable and relevant information exchange. However, islands of information still persist, for information systems that are used throughout the entire cycle have not been developed to allow semantic interpretation of data, which invariably leads to great losses due to data replication and ambiguity issues. The need for interoperability has been recognized as a major topic by several different institutions, like the US Department of Defense and similar European organizations ([4]). On top of that, environmental concerns have led companies to consider servicing and disposal of products as crucial activities within a product's lifecycle ([5]).
According to [13], one of the most promising approaches to handle interoperability issues among engineering applications, as well as other important information systems used in product lifecycle management, is the use of ontologies. An ontology consists of a vocabulary used in a given knowledge domain, enriched by some specification of the meaning or semantics of the terminology within the vocabulary. Therefore, ontologies can potentially be used to bridge the gap between heterogeneous information systems, including those related to sustainability in manufacturing and product/process information models. [13] suggest a so-called interlingua approach, which proposes the use of a shared ontology as a translating element to facilitate communication between heterogeneous information systems. Actually, the use of semantic tools to guarantee unambiguous exchange of information has been perceived not only as a trend, but also as the future format of standards, as opposed to purely syntactic forms such as the EXPRESS language or XML ([6]).
The present paper proposes a reference ontology that may ultimately be used to overcome interoperability issues between engineering and business applications and facilitate the use of sustainability data throughout a product's lifecycle. Such an ontology has its taxonomy derived from terms extracted from currently used and evolving standards, product and process information models, and a PLM domain specific controlled vocabulary. In Section 2, we briefly describe previous work found in the literature. In Section 3, we propose a model to harmonize the different interpretations of a product's lifecycle found in the literature. In Section 4, the sources of information to build the proposed ontology are described, as well as the tools and general approach used. In addition, relevant issues such as the criteria used to select entities and properties, and the difficulties faced are covered. In Section 5, we present extracts of the ontology in its current state, focusing the discussion on controversial terms and properties. In Section 6, an application example is given, in order to further clarify the potential use of the proposed ontology. Our final remarks and suggestions for future work are reported in Section 7.
Section snippets
Previous work
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is considered to be the 21st century paradigm for product development. According to [7], the management of a product from inception to disposal has strategic value for a given company in the networked economy. This has only been possible due to extensive use of IT infrastructure and technology to exchange information, which enables companies to explore external possibilities like partnering with suppliers and co-developers ([5]). Yet, the full potential of
Product lifecycle perspectives
Building a standardized terminology requires a common understanding of what product lifecycle actually means. For some, a product's lifecycle spans the period of time between the perception of a business opportunity and the moment a product is discontinued due to its obsolescence ([27]). According to an environmental standpoint, a product's end-of-life refers to its disposal (cradle-to-grave vision) or disassembly and material recycling (cradle-to-cradle vision) ([30]). Moreover, software tool
Methodological aspects
Building ontologies often involve an extended search for reliable sources of information that can provide unbiased definitions for commonly used terms. Another way is to arrive at an ontology through a consensus of users if unbiased definitions don’t exist. These definitions can then serve not only as a clue to categorize a given term, but also as a first step towards formulating assertions, which are building blocks for more advanced semantic constructs. A controversial term may have its
An ontology to bridge the gap
In order to build a consistent, yet slim, taxonomy, eight fundamental classes have been placed in the DomainConcept partition, namely: Activity, Data, Organization, Place, Process, Product, Property and Resource. In the ValuePartition segment of the taxonomy, the following seven classes have been introduced: Currency, Date, Direction, Scope, Status, Type and UnitOfMeasure. Fig. 4 presents the top-level hierarchy of terms in Protégé’s OWLViz plug-in format. In fact, some of these entities were
Application example
This section presents an example on how the ontology developed in the present research can help in one of the most time consuming tasks at present times: relating information extracted from heterogeneous information systems, used in the sustainable manufacturing context. For this, a fictitious scenario has been created, in which a given person is assigned to perform a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a bicycle. Most of the information needed resides in information systems (e.g. PDM, PLM, ERP)
Summary and future directions
In order to cope with increasing demand for seamless reliable data exchange during a product's lifecycle, including disposal, an ontology for products and processes with emphasis in sustainability has been proposed. Compared with the standards-based approach to data exchange, ontology-based approaches carry the necessary semantics to allow unambiguous information sharing. However, negotiation agents and protocols must be based on ontologies that represent the domain where communication has to
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support received from the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Level Personnel and Fulbright Commission (Grant BEX 2995/09-3), as well as the technical cooperation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US. Special thanks are due to Dr. Ram D. Sriram for competently managing this project and Dr. Rachuri Sudarsan for reviewing the manuscript of this paper. Disclaimer: Certain commercial equipment,
Professor Milton Borsato is a former Fulbright scholar and guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US (2010 and 2013). Dr. Borsato received his PhD from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil, in 2003 in the area of Production Engineering and his MSc degree in Computer Science and Systems Engineering from Muroran Institute of Technology in Japan (1993). He is presently a faculty member of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science
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Professor Milton Borsato is a former Fulbright scholar and guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US (2010 and 2013). Dr. Borsato received his PhD from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil, in 2003 in the area of Production Engineering and his MSc degree in Computer Science and Systems Engineering from Muroran Institute of Technology in Japan (1993). He is presently a faculty member of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science at the Federal University of Technology Parana (UTFPR), Brazil. His research interests are in the area of information systems for product lifecycle management and sustainable manufacturing. Dr. Borsato has been involved in the study of Design Engineering for over 20 years and has practical experience with industry and design projects.