Resource selection ontologies in support of a recipe-based factory design methodology

Factory (re) design involves the appropriate utilisation of product, process and resource knowledge in the determination of suitable configurations of physical factory facilities which have the potential to meet industrial and organisational requirements. Different independent semantic modelling standards exist for products, processes and resources but to automate and facilitate the selection of factory resources, there is the need to semantically integrate resource capabilities with product and process requirements. This paper defines a 'recipe-based' approach to design factories and it is based on the assumption that capabilities and competences of reusable components (or building blocks) of factory resources can be semantically modelled and matched with product-process requirements. This approach will enable Factory Designers and Engineers to decide on relevant resource systems within finite, valuable and defined sets of requirements.