The TOVE Project: Towards a Common-Sense Model of the Enterprise

The goal of the TOVE project is fourfold: 1) to create a shared representation (aka ontology) of the enterprise that each agent in the distributed enterprise can jointly understand and use, 2) define the meaning of each description (aka semantics), 3) implement the semantics in a set of axioms that will enable TOVE to automatically deduce the answer to many “common sense” questions about the enterprise, and 4) define a symbology for depicting a concept in a graphical context. The model is multi-level spanning conceptual, generic and application layers. The generic and application layers all also stratified and composed of micro theories spanning, for example, activities, time, resources, constraints, etc. at the generic level. Critical to the TOVE effort is enabling the easy instantiation of the model for a particular enterprise TOVE models will be automatically created as a by product of the enterprise design function. TOVE is currently being built to model a computer manufacturer and an aerospace engineering firm.