A Holistic Approach for the Architecture and Design of an Ontology-Based Data Integration Capability in Product Master Data Management

Abstract

Abstract. In the context of a broadened product lifecycle management environment, a traditional product information management, also referred to as product master data management (P-MDM) needs to be complemented by other MDM domains. Such MDM domains may include Customers, Financials, Suppliers, Human Resources, Events and other domains. To satisfy such a transversal set of requirements requires a true cross-enterprise semantic integration capability. This capability cannot be met by current off-the-shelf technologies. This paper proposes a research approach that would elicit the definition of a reference architecture and a multi-domain ontology, from research and development work performed notably in ontology engineering, in both academic and industry domains.Keywords. Product lifecycle management, product master data management, ontology-based data integration, data architecture, qualitative research

Ontology-Based Big Data Management

“…This work consisted of a transformation from the standard catalogue format BMEcat to the already mentioned GoodRelations ontology. Fitzgerald et al presented a holistic approach for master data management [34]. The focus of this approach is the usage of the same data structures in different phases of the product life cycle.…”

A Reference Architecture for an Enterprise Knowledge Infrastructure

“…Applications that map data from heterogeneous sources to a global schema and allowing to be restructured as contextualized data, or information, to be circulated and processed for knowledge extraction [3,6,13]. Natural Language Processing (NLP) An problem solving method that uses stored knowledge to convert unstructured data in a form of text to structured data and information [6,14].…”

“…Further processing converts data into information and ultimately into knowledge. A more detail description of RA-EKI ontology structure can be found in [3]. Furthermore, since the inductive phase of the research is on-going, the final findings of the ontology structure including the multi-domain ontology will be the subject of future publications.…”

“…Many obstacles still hinder the generalized adoption of cross-enterprise knowledge management in the PLM paradigm. Current PLM business process definition, product information model and information treatment approaches lack the required agnostic and holistic quality to support industry independent solution patterns [3]. The difficulty in extracting information stored in several types of formats such as image, video and audio constitutes an important hurdle to the enterprises' progress.…”

“…RA-EKI proposes a set of generic applications and a multi-domain ontology at its center. A description of the inductive research method used to elicit ontology patterns in this project can be found in [3]. RA-EKI's fundamental purpose is to deal with the issue of being data rich and knowledge poor, to be inundated with massive quantity of data but with limited capability to convert it into valuable knowledge.…”