Combining RFID with ontologies to create smart objects

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has long been known for its ability to uniquely identify objects. Recent years have witnessed a significant increase in storage capacity on the tag, which is giving rise to a new set of application scenarios. As the tag itself can carry relevant context information, processes can be managed locally rather than relying on a centralised system infrastructure. This in turn results in a massive interoperability challenge. We propose to solve this problem by combining RFID technology with ontologies to create smart objects in the context of manufacturing process control. The idea is to store information originating from an SAP ERP system using the PSL Ontology (ISO 18629) for representing processes and time directly on the RFID tags. As an item flows through a manufacturing process, information about the item can be stored on its tag. This information, along with the PSL axioms, can be used to make inferences about the manufacturing process and the item in particular. In this paper, we discuss our formalisation of an ontology for the SAP data model and show an example of translating data from an SAP ERP system into PSL axioms, and answering queries about a manufacturing process.