Industry Commons: an ecosystem approach to horizontal enablers for sustainable cross-domain industrial innovation (a positioning paper)

This paper introduces the background, concept and definition of the Industry Commons. It initiates a discussion on the positioning of the Industry Commons Ecosystem (ICE) with respect to current research directions in advanced manufacturing and production systems that shape advances in engineering and technology, novel business models and innovation breakthroughs. The potential value of data sharing across industrial domains is estimated at over $100 billion, particularly in view of optimising manufacturing processes. Data sharing across domains however faces a series of well-documented challenges associated with the lack of semantic interoperability and related standards, management of trust and sustainability. Solving bottlenecks in data sharing requires a systemic approach to data management, which can account for all aspects of data use, levels of application, attribution and dynamic exchanges. In this paper we propose a high-level ecosystem approach that integrates societal values with digital affordances of industry’s cognitive-assisted processes, remote interfacing, hybrid applications and large-scale value networks. Early development of an Ontology Commons EcoSystem (OCES) is presented as the key enabling framework for Industry Commons interoperability and a series of enabling frameworks form the basis of future research directions in Trusted Data Sharing and Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management for greater sustainability.Abbreviations: AI – Artificial Intelligence; AIOTI – Alliance of Internet-of-Things Innovation; ALM – Asset Lifecycle Management; ALO – Application-Level Ontology; AP – Application Protocol; API – Application Programming Interface; B2B – Business-to-Business; B2C – Business-to-Customer; CDE – Cross-Domain Ecosystem; CDEI – Cross-Domain Ecosystem Interoperability; CL2M – Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management; CNO – Collaborative Networked Organisations; CPS – Cyber-Physical Systems; CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility; DLO – Domain-Level Ontology; DLT – Distributed Ledger Technology; EM – Enterprise Modelling; FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable; GUI – Graphical User Interface; ICE, Industry Commons Ecosystem; IOF – Industrial Ontology Foundry; IP – Intellectual Property; IPR – Intellectual Property Rights; ISN – Intertwined Supply Network; MIR – Music Information Retrieval; MLO – Middle-Level Ontology; MO – Meta-Ontology; OCES – Ontology Commons EcoSystem; PI – Physical Internet; PLM – Product Lifecycle Management; ROI – Return-on-Investment; SC – Supply Chain; SCM – Supply Chain Management; SOS – System-of-Systems; TDS – Trusted Data Sharing; TLO – Top-Level Ontology; TRO – Top Reference Ontology; TUI – Tangible User Interface.