Industry Commons: an ecosystem approach to horizontal enablers for sustainable cross-domain industrial innovation (a positioning paper)

Abstract

This paper introduces the background, concept and definition of the Industry Commons. It initiates a discussion on the positioning of the Industry Commons Ecosystem (ICE) with respect to current research directions in advanced manufacturing and production systems that shape advances in engineering and technology, novel business models and innovation breakthroughs. The potential value of data sharing across industrial domains is estimated at over $100 billion, particularly in view of optimising manufacturing processes. Data sharing across domains however faces a series of well-documented challenges associated with the lack of semantic interoperability and related standards, management of trust and sustainability. Solving bottlenecks in data sharing requires a systemic approach to data management, which can account for all aspects of data use, levels of application, attribution and dynamic exchanges. In this paper we propose a high-level ecosystem approach that integrates societal values with digital affordances of industry’s cognitive-assisted processes, remote interfacing, hybrid applications and large-scale value networks. Early development of an Ontology Commons EcoSystem (OCES) is presented as the key enabling framework for Industry Commons interoperability and a series of enabling frameworks form the basis of future research directions in Trusted Data Sharing and Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management for greater sustainability.

Abbreviations: AI – Artificial Intelligence; AIOTI – Alliance of Internet-of-Things Innovation; ALM – Asset Lifecycle Management; ALO – Application-Level Ontology; AP – Application Protocol; API – Application Programming Interface; B2B – Business-to-Business; B2C – Business-to-Customer; CDE – Cross-Domain Ecosystem; CDEI – Cross-Domain Ecosystem Interoperability; CL2M – Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management; CNO – Collaborative Networked Organisations; CPS – Cyber-Physical Systems; CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility; DLO – Domain-Level Ontology; DLT – Distributed Ledger Technology; EM – Enterprise Modelling; FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable; GUI – Graphical User Interface; ICE, Industry Commons Ecosystem; IOF – Industrial Ontology Foundry; IP – Intellectual Property; IPR – Intellectual Property Rights; ISN – Intertwined Supply Network; MIR – Music Information Retrieval; MLO – Middle-Level Ontology; MO – Meta-Ontology; OCES – Ontology Commons EcoSystem; PI – Physical Internet; PLM – Product Lifecycle Management; ROI – Return-on-Investment; SC – Supply Chain; SCM – Supply Chain Management; SOS – System-of-Systems; TDS – Trusted Data Sharing; TLO – Top-Level Ontology; TRO – Top Reference Ontology; TUI – Tangible User Interface.

KEYWORDS:

• Industry Commons
• Intertwined Supply Networks
• Trusted Data Sharing
• Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management
• Enterprise Integration
• Ontology Ecosystem

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, M.M., upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 ROI (Return-on-Investment) was a concept introduced by Donaldson Brown in 1914 as part of his work as administrative analyst for the DuPont Company. It was conceived as a formula for monitoring business performance by measuring investments against combined earnings and working capital. https://www.hagley.org/librarynews/father-roi-donaldson-brown

2 Magas M., in minutes of the Alliance of Internet-of-Things Innovation (AIOTI) Innovation Ecosystems meeting, 17 December 2015.

3 The establishment of the Alliance of Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI) was facilitated by the European Commission in 2015.

4 Tangible User Interfaces (Ishii and Ullmer 1997; Holmquist et al. 2019).

5 Open Innovation 2.0 is an initiative by the European Commission Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group (OISPG), whose legacy is continued by its founders as part of the Industry Commons Foundation Steering Board.

6 IP tracking tests have been successfully completed in decentralised systems in 2017 (Magas 2018).

7 Effective system design takes a holistic view of data marketplaces that drive productisation, and allows for constant adaptation to environmental conditions.

8 Vernadat provides a comprehensive review of Enterprise Modelling covering four decades of its evolution leading up to developments in the context of smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 (Vernadat 2020).

9 Bousdekis and Mentzas present the state of the art in Enterprise Integration and Interoperability in the frame of Industry 4.0 (Bousdekis and Mentzas 2021).

10 Car leasing is attributed to Zollie Frank who started long-term leasing cars in 1914. https://www.osv.ltd.uk/who-invented-car-leasing/

11 There is evidence that Freeman’s in Toronto offered dress suits for rent as early as 1918. https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/tuxedo-black-tie-guide/black-tie-tuxedo-history/depression-1930s-black-tie/.

12 Share Now is a joint venture between Daimler and BMW, the result of the merger between Car2Go and DriveNow (https://www.share-now.com). Europcar acquired Ubeeqo in 2015 (https://www.ubeeqo.com).

13 For the first quarter of 2021, Volvo Cars more than tripled its numbers of subscriptions sold online through its Care by Volvo offer, compared to the same period last year (BW Online Bureau 2021).

14 In March 2021, Porsche expanded its subscription offering in the U.S. (Korosek 2021).

15 Ralph Lauren announced the initiative on 2 March 2021 (Stenzel 2021).

16 As an example of the state of the art in freight management, the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA) is a blockchain-enabled logistics digital ecosystem which builds standards for interoperability, transparency and tracking in the logistics supply chain (Walker 2021).

17 For a comprehensive overview of ontology building, see Arp, Smith, and Spear (2015).

18 The OntoCommons EcoSystem (OCES) is a concept by the OntoCommons project funded by the Horizon2020 Programme of the European Commission (2020–2023). https://ontocommons.eu

19 The IOF aims to create a set of open reference ontologies to support the manufacturing and engineering industry needs and advance data interoperability. There is a strong collaboration between IOF and the OntoCommons project. The respective IOF and OCES architectures are built on similar principles and are expected to converge, enabling Industry Commons in a globally accepted common standard. https://www.industrialontologies.org/

20 A survey of these and other TLOs is available from UK Research and Innovation (Partridge et al. 2020).

21 Energy consumption of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) has been subject to much discussion, focusing mainly on blockchain cryptocurrencies which require the energy intensive Proof-of-Work (Sedlmeir et al. 2020). Alternatives such as the IOTA Tangle, developed for use with IoT, aim to reduce the environmental impact of DLTs (Popov 2018).

22 The European Green Deal aims to eliminate greenhouse emissions by 2050. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en.

23 Within the industrial domain Digital Twins are defined as virtual representations of physical products which are ‘virtually indistinguishable from their physical counterparts’ thanks to the rich data provided by sensor-driven advanced manufacturing systems (Grieves 2014).

Additional information

Funding

The work presented in this paper is funded by the EU H2020 project OntoCommons (958371). H2020 Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies

Notes on contributors

Michela Magas

Michela Magas is Innovation and Sustainability Manager for the European project OntoCommons and Chair of the Industry Commons Foundation which is building a legacy for cross-domain collaboration and data interoperability. Michela has 27 years of experience of innovation for international clients including Apple, Nike and Nokia, and is founder of MTF Labs, a global technology platform of over 7500 creative innovators and scientific researchers. She is advisor to the EU, the G7, the OECD and several national and regional governments. She currently sits on President von der Leyen’s High Level Round Table for the New European Bauhaus initiative, on the Expert Group for the Design of the European Innovation Council Marketplace and on the Advisory Board of CERN IdeaSquare (ISAB-G). In 2017, she was awarded European Woman Innovator of the Year and in 2016, she was presented with an Innovation Luminary Award for Creative Innovation by the European Commission and Intel Labs Europe. In 2019, the Leonardo Journal, published by MIT Press, recognised her as an Outstanding Peer Reviewer.

Dimitris Kiritsis

Dimitris Kiritsis (Kyritsis) is Faculty Member at the Institute of Mechanical Engineering of the School of Engineering of EPFL, Switzerland, where he is leading a research group on ICT for Sustainable Manufacturing. His research interests are Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management, Sustainable Manufacturing IIoT, Semantic Technologies, Industrial Ontologies and Data Analytics for Engineering Applications. Dimitris serves as Director of the doctoral Program of EPFL on Robotics, Control and Intelligent Systems (EDRS). He served as Guest Professor at the IMS Center of the University of Cincinnati, and Invited Professor at the University of Technology of Compiègne, the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard and at ParisTech ENSAM Paris. Dimitris is actively involved in EU research programs in the area of Factories of the Future and Enabling ICT for Sustainable Manufacturing. He has more than 220 publications. From September 2013 to September 2019, Dimitris was the Chair of IFIP WG5.7 – Advanced Production Management Systems. From 2013 to 2017, he was member of the Advisory Group of the European Council on Leadership on Enabling Industrial Technologies – AG LEIT-NMBP. He is also founding fellow member of the International Society for Engineering Asset Management (ISEAM) and among the initiators and co-founders of the IOF (Industrial Ontologies Foundry). Since 2019, Dimitris is the member of the WEF Global Future Council of Advanced Manufacturing and Production.