Managing operation knowledge for the metal industry

The development of a knowledge management system (KMS) is becoming increasingly important for the metal industry in Taiwan. The ontology design and knowledge search are two major activities of knowledge management. In this paper, we introduce a three-stage life cycle for the ontology design and propose a Java/XML-based scheme for automatically generating knowledge search components to reduce the overhead in developing a KMS. The resulting ontology is classified as information ontology and domain ontology so that the objective of semantic match for knowledge search can be realized. The system is built on the top of the component-based KAON development suite which makes it more flexible and robust. We conduct a case study by applying the system to Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC), Taiwan to confirm its effectiveness and efficiency in dealing with KM activities. In addition, the proposed reusable scheme endorses the encouraging feasibility of wide applications to different domains.