EDM Council and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Collaborate to Launch Ontology Development Infrastructure for the Manufacturing Industry

NEW YORK, Oct. 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- EDM Council, a cross-industry trade association focused on data management and analytics best practices, has teamed up with the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to launch a collaborative program to standardize knowledge engineering and ontology development, including infrastructure, processes and guidelines to support data interoperability and analytics in manufacturing. The program will also support the Industrial Ontology Foundry (IOF), which will help in developing the processes and product modelling for the resulting data models.

The current data and analytics model that manufacturing firms use to develop products and implement manufacturing processes is very complex but lacks a universal set of data guidelines, which has led to cross-organizational production issues, delays, and heightened levels of risk. This project will leverage the infrastructure and processes of the EDM Council's Open Knowledge Graph Innovation Lab to address these challenges, which are being used to build out other industry ontologies, including ontologies for the finance and pharmaceutical industries.

The new infrastructure will enable the IOF community, whose members include manufacturing firms, software vendors, academics and research institutes, to:

• Formalize data definitions to improve data quality for the entire product life cycle, including product design & engineering, production planning, supply chain management, maintenance and service, and decommission
• Create greater interoperability across industry and enterprise data
• Improve issues related to data silos while helping to resolve lingering terminology conflicts
• Automate data analyses which will improve productivity across the manufacturing supply chain
• Enhance the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities

"This type of ontology supports the uses of the large amount of data this industry creates to bring production and supply chain efficiency, quality, and resiliency to the next level. By teaming up with the EDM Council, we will be able to deliver a platform for producing new, high-quality data standards that create strategic value for manufacturing professionals," said Serm Kulvatunyou, project lead for the Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing and Supply Chain project at NIST and an IOF Board Member.

NIST promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve quality of life.

"As processes and advancements in the manufacturing supply chain are becoming more sophisticated, the amount of data being created has amplified exponentially," said John Bottega, President of the EDM Council. "By creating a consistent data quality ontology for the manufacturing sector in collaboration with NIST and IOF, we will collectively deliver the necessary capabilities that companies can implement in order to effectively manage their business."

The infrastructure that supports the manufacturing ontology that will be developed in this project comes off of the success of the EDM Council's Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO).

EDM Council is the global association created to elevate the practice of data management and analytics as a business and operational priority. The Council is the leading global advocate for the development and implementation of data standards, best practices, and comprehensive training and certification programs. With more than 300 member organizations globally from the Americas, EMEA, and Asia, and more than 20,000 data management professionals as members, EDM Council provides a venue for data professionals to interact, communicate, and collaborate on the challenges and advances in data management and analytics as critical organizational functions. For more, explore edmcouncil.org and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The Industry Ontology Foundry's mission is to create a set of core and open reference ontologies that spans the entire domain of digital manufacturing. The IOF works with Government, Industry, Academic and Standards organizations to advance data interoperability in their respective fields. The organization provides principles and best practices by which quality ontologies can be developed, while providing an organizational framework and governance processes that ensure conformance to principles and best practices for development, sharing, maintenance, evolution, and documentation of IOF ontologies.