A framework for merging ontologies in the context of smart factories

Current trends, such as individualization, increasing complexity, and specialization, require digitization in engineering and production. However, digitization by itself often leads to so-called data silos, which cannot be leveraged effectively when designing and operating smart factories due to the heterogeneity of the information available. This paper presents a framework for (semi-)automatically merging the highly reusable terminological components of production ontologies in an a posteriori way. The framework combines translations, domain-specific vocabularies, and inconsistency checks with syntactic, terminological, and structural analyses to integrate knowledge representations formalized in the Web Ontology Language. Integrating heterogeneous knowledge representations in the production domain can improve support systems for engineers, increase awareness of interdependencies, and enable unambiguous communication in smart factories.