Configuration of product extension services in servitisation using an ontology-based approach

Product extension services (PESs) are becoming an important new source of profit for servitised manufacturers. Configuring correct and valid PESs out of available service components thus becomes a critical activity to respond to diverse customer needs. However, PES configuration is a rather difficult knowledge-intensive task. In this paper, an ontology-based approach to representing PES configuration knowledge and developing a PES configuration system is presented, with the aim of enabling effective and efficient configuration by sharing and reusing knowledge unambiguously. First, meta-ontologies which include service sub-ontology, product sub-ontology and customer sub-ontology are built for the generic PES configuration domain. Then, configuration knowledge in the specific domain is derived by re-using or inheriting the concepts and relations in these meta-ontologies. Structural knowledge in domain-specific ontologies is further represented in OWL, an ontology language, while rule knowledge is formalised in SWRL, a rule language based on OWL. Finally, actual configuration reasoning processes are performed with the support of a rule engine, namely JESS, by mapping OWL-based structural knowledge and SWRL-based rule knowledge to JESS facts and JESS rules, respectively. The proposed approach is demonstrated by an example of configurable PESs called a ‘building solution’.