A First-Order Logic Formalization of the Industrial Ontologies Foundry Signature Using Basic Formal Ontology

AbstractBasic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology used in hundreds of active projects in scientific and other domains. BFO has been selected to serve as top-level ontology in the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF), an initiative on the part of representatives from a number of branches of the advanced manufacturing industries to create a suite of ontologies to support digital manufacturing. We here present a first draft set of axioms and definitions of an IOF upper ontology descending from BFO that is designed to capture the meanings of principal terms used in manufacturing and related areas. This set of terms can be viewed as the signature common to the modules of the IOF ontology suite.