Semantic Assistance System for Providing Smart Services and Reasoning in Aero-Engine Manufacturing

Digitalization has led to creation and management of knowledge using information and communication technology tools (ICT) and systems. Implementing such tools and systems across the lifecycle is a tedious process and not to forget customizing them to the company’s processes is an additional challenge. Hence, data in a company is spread across multiple ICT in heterogeneous data formats and are sparsely connected together. Connecting the various data sources to enable a single point of access of information in a company can improve performance, quality, reduce costs and time to market. The usage of semantic technologies enables meaningful and structured unification of these distributed data sources and therefore, is providing advantages such as reusability, interoperability, and information flow across the entire value chain. Extending these capabilities with smart services and intelligent algorithms, is advantageous for the user. The user will then receive context sensitive information and additional suggestions that increases the speed, quality and efficiency of work. This paper aims at describing the design, developing and validation of an assistance system for semantic product data, in cooperation with Rolls-Royce Deutschland, an aerospace manufacturing industry, using semantic technologies and machine learning.