Heterogeneous knowledge syntheses for manufacturing information systems

To integrate a variety of heterogeneous sources in an E-Manufacturing environment, an innovative architecture was put forward to provide a computing framework for knowledge syntheses. A common knowledge representation (CKR) model was proposed to resolve both structural and semantic heterogeneity issues in performing heterogeneous knowledge synthesis. This model defined not only domain ontology but also domain standard glossary and their relationship. At the same time, a knowledge base was built to elaborate the status of ontology. A resource description framework schema (RDFS) was developed based on the defined domain ontology and used as the vehicle for data transformation. So information retrieved from each specific heterogeneous communication channel was transformed into knowledge conforming to CKR in RDFS. As a result, the consistent and current knowledge is retrieved according to decision-making demand.