K-Hub: A Modular Ontology to Support Document Retrieval and Knowledge Extraction in Industry 5.0

Digitalization is entering the industrial sector and different needs are emerging to support shop floor operators; in particular, they need to retrieve information to support their operations (e.g., during maintenance activities), from structured and unstructured sources, as well as from other people’s experience. Sharing knowledge and making it accessible to industrial workers is therefore a key challenge that Semantic Web technologies are able to address and solve. In this paper, we present a modular ontology that we engineered in order to support the collection, extraction and structuring of relevant information for industrial operators in a “knowledge hub” (K-Hub). In particular, our K-Hub ontology covers several aspects, from document annotation/retrieval to procedure support, from manufacturing domain concepts to company-specific information. We discuss its engineering process, extensibility and availability, as well as its current and future application scenarios to support industrial workers.