The Process Specification Language (PSL) is a set of

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...

terms used to describe processes. The logic terms are specified in an

ontology In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...

that provides a formal description of the components and their relationships that make up a process. The ontology was developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST), and has been approved as an international standard in the document

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

18629. The Process Specification Language can be used for the representation of

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...

and

business process A business process, business method or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...

es, including production scheduling, process planning, workflow management, business process reengineering, simulation, process realization, process modelling, and

project management Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. T ...

. In the manufacturing domain, PSL's objective is to serve as a common representation for integrating several process-related applications throughout the manufacturing process

life cycle Life cycle, life-cycle, or lifecycle may refer to: Science and academia *Biological life cycle, the sequence of life stages that an organism undergoes from birth to reproduction ending with the production of the offspring * Life-cycle hypothesis ...

Ontology

The foundation of the ontology of PSL is a set of primitive

concept Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by ...

s (''object, activity, activity_occurrence, timepoint''), constants (''inf+, inf-''), functions (''beginof, endof''), and relations (''occurrence_of, participates_in, between, before, exists_at, is_occurring_at''). This core ontology is then used to describe more complex concepts. The ontology uses the Common Logic Interchange Format (CLIF) to represent the concepts, constants, functions, and relations. This ontology provides a vocabulary of classes and relations for concepts at the ground level of event-instances, object-instances, and timepoints. PSL's top level is built around the following: * Activity, a class or type of action, such as install-part, which is the class of actions in which parts are installed * Activity-occurrence, an event or action that takes place at a specific place and time, such as a specific instance of install-part occurring at a specific

timestamp A timestamp is a sequence of characters or encoded information identifying when a certain event occurred, usually giving date and time of day, sometimes accurate to a small fraction of a second. Timestamps do not have to be based on some absolut ...

* Timepoint, a point in time * Object, anything that is not a timepoint or an activity.

References

Ontology (information science) ISO 18629 {{business-stub

Ontology

See also

References