Semantic technologies for engineering asset life cycle management

Abstract

The use of semantic technologies and ontologies is becoming more and more popular in engineering applications and particularly in product modelling. Still, the use is limited in academia and applications are of a small scale. In this paper we present the research work done by the closed-loop life cycle management (CL2M) team of the Laboratory for Computer-Aided Design and Production (LICP) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, on the use of ontology-based technologies for the life cycle management of products and engineering assets. This research has been performed through a number of PhD works partially financed by the European Framework Program for research. It aims at providing both a wider understanding of the benefits of applying such technologies in the complex environment of asset life cycle management (ALM) and at providing a platform for implementing ontology models in industrial environments.

Keywords:

• engineering assets
• closed-loop life cycle management
• asset life cycle management
• semantics
• ontology
• PLM
• context aware

Acknowledgments

I would like to express deep gratitude to my former PhD student Dr Aristeidis Matsokis and to my current PhD students Fatih Karakoyun, Andreas Koukias, Ana Milicic, Drazen Nadoveza and Apostolos Perdikakis who are the real actors behind this research, together with my collaborators Dr Soumaya El Kadiri and Dr Ahmed Bufardi.

I would also like to thank the European Commission research program for the partial support of this work through the mentioned FP7 projects PLANTCockpit, LinkedDesign, SuPLight and e-SAVE.

Last but not least, I would like to deeply thank the director of the LICP laboratory of EPFL Prof Paul Xirouchakis and all the staff of the lab for their highly appreciated overall support.