Organization and problem ontology for supply chain information support system

One means of effective supply chain management is through sharing knowledge among the supply chain’s constituents. Knowledge about a supply chain can be classified as organizational and problem specific. Organizational knowledge helps in understanding the domain requirements for supply chain management. Problem-specific knowledge provides input for problem-solving modules. The concept of ontology is applied to systematically document shared knowledge about issues and problems in the supply chain domain. Ontology development for a supply chain—a collaborative process that crosses the individual organizational boundaries of its member and comprises knowledge capture, assembly, storage, and dissemination—is described. The paper then discusses ontology server organization, which facilitates reuse of ontologies in an open environment.