An ontology-based framework for sustainable factories

The problem of factory sustainability is commonly addressed by focusing on specific aspects related to products, processes or production resources, while the impact of the building and facilities is usually neglected even though it counts for 40% of the total world's energy consumption. This paper presents a holistic framework based on an integrated collaborative virtual environment that facilitates the sharing of the complete factory information and knowledge between various software tools, supporting the sustainable design and management of all the factory entities. In particular, the attention is focused on the Semantic Data Model that provides a semantic representation of the data and knowledge required for sustainability assessment.