Ontological model centered on resource capabilities for the inspection process planning

Abstract

[EN] Planning of a manufacturing process is a knowledge-intensive task in which a lot of information/knowledge must be managed, especially to the most conceptual levels. One of these tasks that is realized at supervisor planning level, consists of the assignment and configuration of resources for each activity to execute. Decisions that must be based on the resource capabilities, which depend largely on resource configuration, so that they can ensure a good result. As it is well known, the ontological approaches have shown well positioned in these cases where knowledge management is needed, moreover, these approaches enable a shared conceptualization, which make it possible to implement process planning in a collaborative environment, particularly when they are accompanied by a methodology that facilitates their interpretation and use. In previous researches, a general ontology for modelling the resource capabilities involved in a process has been proposed. This ontology has been specialized in order to support the process planning task and a methodology supported on graphical representation for validating the configurations of resources assigned in a manufacturing process has been proposed. Based on these results, in this paper, an extended ontology for the inspection process planning is presented. This extension includes new types of activities (inspection activities) and new type of resources (inspection resources), and is centered on the dimensional and geometrical capabilities of the resources. Additionally, using the ontology semantics and the proposed methodology, an application for an inspection plan is developed. The inspection process planning case is focused on the preparation activities used for obtaining the configurations of the resources, since they largely determine the capabilities of the resulting resources. The application demonstrates the proficiency of the ontology to execute manufacturing planning and inspection planning in a dual form.