TOWARD A METHOD FOR ACQUIRING CIM ONTOLOGIES
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An important requirement for world-class CIM systems is the ability to capture knowledge from multiple disciplines and store it in a form that facilitates re-use, sharing, and extendibility. Taxonomies and glossaries, in and of themselves, will not fully address this requirement, and will need to be supplemented so as to circumscribe the meanings and logical properties of the terms as precisely as possible. We thus perceive the need for ontologies rather than mere taxonomies. An ontology is a description of the kinds of things, both physical and conceptual, that make up a given domain and the relationships among them as represented by the terminology in that domain. This paper describes a scientific method for acquiring, structuring and maintaining CIM ontologies. An ontology capture method is essential to developing practical CIM ontologies because it facilitates the direct capture of CIM knowledge by practitioners within the manufacturing domain. The proposed ontology capture method includes: (1)A graphical language to support conceptual ontology analysis. (2)A structured text language for detailed ontology characterization (3)A systematic procedure that provides guidelines for effective ontology capture. Finally, the utility of the method is demonstrated by describing how the method is used to develop an ontology of a shop floor control system. 1995 Taylor & Francis Ltd.
