Organization and problem ontology for supply-chain information support system

One means of effective supply chain management is through sharing knowledge among the supply chain's constituents. Knowledge about a supply chain can be classified as organizational and problem specific. Organizational knowledge helps in understanding the domain requirements for supply chain management. Problem-specific knowledge provides input for problem-solving modules. The concept of ontology is applied to systematically document shared knowledge about issues and problems in the supply chain domain. Ontology development for a supply chain-a collaborative process that crosses the individual organizational boundaries of its member and comprises knowledge capture, assembly, storage, and dissemination-is described. The paper then discusses ontology server organization, which facilitates reuse of ontologies in an open environment.