Ontological harmonization of enterprise product models: an experimented scenario

Abstract

Today, the industrial environment is plenty populated with applications helping to support its multiple Product Life Cycle stages. However, organizations typically acquire them aiming to solve focused needs, without an overall view of the global enterprise’s system integration. Additionally, implementing new technology in organizations is a complex task, and the advent of continuous technological evolution makes organizations unable to be constantly updated. Such dynamics has a recognized impact in costs and work environment that companies cannot afford, and most of such proposals do not go beyond the research phase. This paper synthesizes research the authors have been developed in the area of intelligent interoperability and ontology, proposing a methodology for enterprise’s interoperability enhancement, keeping the same organization’s technical and operational environment, improving its methods of work and making better the usability of the installed technology through ontological harmonization of the enterprise product models in use.