A Semantic Web-Based Architecture to Support Product Data Management Systems

The distributed, dynamic and disparate nature of the information in supply chains is a major obstacle to gather the dispersed information required for the function of an enterprise. This obstacle affects the product data managementpsilas functionality and capability. However, the recent advance in semantic Web technologies gives the opportunity to overcome it. This contribution proposes a semantic Web-based architecture that supports the formulation of queries about the structure of products whose components are manufactured by different nodes of a supply chain that apply the concept of collaborative product development. The integration of different sources of information is achieved by means of a common vocabulary defined by an ontology, but locally keeping data management in each node of the supply chain.