Abstract

With the increase in complexity of industrial systems it becomes more and more challenging to make well-grounded decisions for system design and operation. Following the concept of Virtual Factories with Knowledge-Driven Optimization (VF-KDO), this paper proposes a graph database approach to support knowledge-driven and simulation-based optimization. With the mapping of a VF-KDO ontology to a graph database, competency questions that facilitate traceability, transparency, and group decision making can be answered. This is exemplified with an industrial use case and different student projects from an education course in Industrial Engineering and Management.