Ontologies for Product and Process Traceability at Manufacturing Organizations: A Software Requirements Approach

A Traceability business process is mandatory and unavoidable on manufacturing organizations. Customers, particularly original equipment manufacturers, require it on contracts, while governments enforce it, through rules and regulations. Organizations fail to create and sustain a business process satisfying traceability demands. IT departments are one of the main players on efforts to create a solution, as this process is only manageable when supported by software. This document presents an approach to improve the understanding of traceability business process by using ontologies as a requirements modeling technique.