Domain ontology for expressing knowledge of variants of thermally modified wood products

Abstract

The thermally modified wood producer Thermory AS manufactures about 400 different products, which are ordered in large number of variants that makes the expression of the product variant knowledge and its validation very important. In this paper, we express knowledge of product variants as domain ontology in order to capture the product knowledge in the way that is consistent and shareable between humans and machines. Using Ontology Web Language (OWL) as Description Logics (DL) based ontology representation language enables to detect inconsistency in the product knowledge and customer order requirements. Constraints on valid product variants are expressed as OWL class expressions and as rules in Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL). The provided knowledge representation method makes it possible to reduce combinatorial complexity of description of product variants and to place correct manufacturing orders saving time and money for the company.