An Ontological Approach to Enterprise Knowledge Modeling in a Shipping Company

Modeling approaches are gaining popularity in knowledge management (KM), especially in specifying knowledge contents. This paper addresses the enterprise knowledge modeling. An enterprise knowledge model provides users with an integrated, holistic view of organizational knowledge resources. Employing a reliable methodology is critical to building successful enterprise knowledge models. A good methodology provides an effective and efficient mechanism for developing a model. This paper first reviews the enterprise knowledge modeling (EKM) and its methodologies. An ontology-based EKM (OBEKM) methodology is proposed. Its products, procedures, and modeling language are described. The methodology is then applied to the construction of a shipping company’s knowledge model for demonstration.