Manufacturing ontology analysis and design: towards excellent manufacturing

Excellent manufacturing is regarded as a production activity by communicating manufacturing knowledge over Internet. Shared manufacturing knowledge understanding is one important issue to be solved to realize excellent manufacturing. This work proposes an ontology-driven solution for the issue. First, it presents concepts and terms needed in discussing ontology driven excellent manufacturing and states the motivation for developing manufacturing ontology. It makes an analysis and improvement of ontology definitions, classifications and development methods. A manufacturing ontology is primarily designed based on the analysis of manufacturing knowledge characteristics. The further studies of implementing excellent manufacturing and the manufacturing ontology are discussed in the conclusion.