A manufacturing foundation ontology for product life cycle interoperability

This paper presents the idea of a proposed Manufacturing Foundation Ontology (MFO) aimed at acting as a basis for the Product Life Cycle (PLC) interoperability. MFO is aimed to have the provision for introducing interoperability not only across departments but across organization as well. The proposed idea shows the development of a MFO in several layers and various levels in those layers. The foundation ontology will act as a basis for building Interoperable knowledge bases or ‘World Models’ from a library of formally defined concepts in a heavy weight ontology. A MFO must be flexible enough to allow organizations to be able to model their own domains with the flexibility to use the terms they want. Rules and axioms governing each and every concept add rigour to the semantics of the MFO and restrict the use of concepts to facilitate interoperability with a minimum effect on flexibility to model.