Product to process: an ontology-based approach for product manufacturing process in flexible manufacturing system

Abstract

Given the importance and gain of acquiring flexibility and interoperability, the reconfigurability of manufacturing systems remains an active subject of industry research. We propose, in this paper, an ontology-based model for the product's process for a flexible manufacturing system. This model avoids the technical difficulties related to the product manufacturing design and offers a conversion of the product manufacturing process semantic description to its technical implementation inside the manufacturing system. The ontology is based primarily on the components of the production system and the product life cycle process. We have tested our approach in a flexible cell case study to have the new product manufacturing process using a depth first search-based algorithm applied to the proposed ontology.