Supply Chain Workflow Modeling Using Ontologies

One of the primary objectives of supply chain (SC) information support system is to develop a conceptual design of organizational and process knowledge models which facilitate optimal SC management (SCM). The SC knowledge modeling consists of two components: (1) modeling SC workflows and (2) capturing and organizing knowledge necessary for managing them. Workflow modeling deals with handling activities to generate and utilize knowledge, whereas ontology engineering formalizes knowledge content. This chapter proposes a framework comprising both aspects of knowledge modeling. To model workflows, a combination of two frameworks is proposed: (1) SC operation reference model for higher-level process and (2) process modeling tools, such as integrated definition (IDEF) and unified modeling language (UML), for the lower, application-level process model representation. For workflow knowledge capturing and representation, two standards are introduced: situation calculus and SC markup language (SCML). The former is utilized for capturing process logic with mathematical expressions, and the latter for coding this logic with a computational language. An example of production scheduling for a steel SC is provided as an illustration.