Towards a Semiotic Metrics Suite for Product Ontology Evaluation

Abstract

In recent years, product ontology has been proposed for solving integration problems in product-related information systems such as e-commerce and supply chain management applications. A product ontology provides consensual definitions of concepts and inter-relationships being relevant in a product domain of interest. Adopting such an ontology requires means for assessing their suitability and selecting the “right” product ontology. In this article, the authors (1) propose a metrics suite for product ontology evaluation based on semiotic theory, and (2) demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of the metrics suite using a supply chain model. The contribution of our research is the comprehensive metrics suite that takes into account the various quality dimensions of product ontology.