This paper discusses the design of a Digital Twin (DT) demonstrator for Smart Manufacturing, following an open source approach for implementation. Open source technology can comprise of software, hardware and hybrid solutions that nowadays drive Smart Manufacturing. The major potential of open source technology in Smart Manufacturing lies in enabling interoperability and in reducing the capital costs of designing and implementing new manufacturing solutions. After presenting our motivation to adopt an open source approach for the design of a DT demonstrator, we identify the major implementation requirements of Smart Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) and DTs. A conceptualisation of the core components of a DT demonstrator is provided and three technology building blocks for the realisation of a DT have been identified. These technology building blocks include components for the management of data, models and services. From the conceptual model of the DT demonstrator, we derived a high-level micro-services architecture and provided a case study infrastructure for the implementation of the DT demonstrator based on available open source technologies. The paper closes with research questions to be addressed in the future.

Abstract. Business models on the basis of digital content require sophisticated descriptions of that content, as well as service-oriented carrier architectures that allow to negotiate and enforce contract and license schemes in heterogeneous digital application environments. We describe Knowledge Content Objects (KCO), that provide expressive semantic descriptions of digital content, based on an ontology of Information Objects, built under the DOLCE, DnS and Plan Ontologies (DDPO). In particular, we discuss how this structure supports business requirements within the context of paid content. Interactions between agents are embedded into digital infrastructures that are implemented on an advanced knowledge content carrier architecture (KCCA) that communicates via a dedicated protocol (KCTP). We show how this architecture allows to integrate existing digital repositories so that the content can be made available to a semantically rich digital environment.

Collaborative construction of ontologies is still hampered by immature methodologies and by tools which are insufficient for domain experts who are not at the same time, knowledge engineers. The DynamOnt project has set out to develop a methodology for collaboratively creating group ontologies which evolve over time as well as in space and internal complexity. The project also seeks to identify requirements and specifications for tools which will support the construction of such dynamically evolving ontologies. Major issues are the guidance of knowledge workers towards soundly constructed ontologies with the help of upper level ontologies and an exploration into language issues -in our case the scenario for constructing ontologies, if German is the language of choice for the domain experts. We also investigate the relationship between terminology and ontology, which we view as a bridge between linguistically motivated and IT motivated standardisation of conceptual models. We envisage knowledge workers' environments of the future to be tightly integrated systems with their hypertextual capabilities being controlled by ontologically sound interaction and navigation models.

Abstract.Creating a coherent set of ontologies to support a collaborative design process amongst different firms which develop mechatronic products is a challenge due to the semantic heterogeneity of the underlying domain models and the amount of domain knowledge that needs to be covered. We tackle the problem of semantic heterogeneity by employing the DOLCE foundational ontology and by aligning our models to it. We approach the problem of scale, i.e. the amount of knowledge modeled by keeping the models at a descriptive level which is still granular enough to connect them with domain and task specific engineering tools. In order to manage the complexity of the modeling task we separate the models into the foundational layer, the mechatronic layer consisting of three domain ontologies, one process model and one cross-domain model, and the collaborative application layer. For the development process, we employ a methodology for dynamic ontology creation, which moves from taxonomical structures to formal models.

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