Towards an Ontological Model for Technological Systems Structure Representation.

More and more distribution companies need a model to efficiently retrieve physical technological systems. Building ontologies as knowledge representation models with respect to technological systems information is increasingly seen as a key to enable interoperability between software agents and people on the Web or through to network connections. This work presents a first step for the development of an ontological model for technological systems structure representation composed by physical artifacts. The goal of the work is twofold. First, the structure of these systems is described. Besides, a model to adapt the known Bill of Materials (BOM) to the needs of distribution companies focused not only on selling physical artifacts but also to correctly configure a technological system is presented. Finally, our approach proposes a mereotopological relationships set to model the interactions between the parts that make up the structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]