Applying knowledge bases to make factories smarter

Abstract Knowledge Bases (KBs) enable engineers to capture knowledge in a formalized way. This formalization allows us to combine knowledge, thus creating the basis for smart factories while also supporting product and production system design. Building comprehensive and reusable KBs is still a challenge, though, especially for knowledge-intensive domains like engineering and production. To cope with the sheer amount of knowledge, engineers should reuse existing KBs. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of domain-specific KBs for production and engineering, as well as generic top-level ontologies. The application of such top-level ontologies offers new insights by integrating knowledge from various domains, stakeholders, and companies. To bridge the gap between top-level ontologies and existing domain KBs, we introduce an Intermediate Engineering Ontology (IEO).