ESWC Workshop on Semantic Technology Implementation for Industrial Enterprises
Authors: Dr. Caitlin Woods and Prof. Melinda Hodkiewicz
Date: May 2026
Workshop Title
Semantic Technology Implementation for Industrial Enterprises
Information about the Workshop
We are entering a pivotal moment for the future of Semantic Web Technologies (SWTs) for industry users such as equipment manufacturers, engineering designers, and industrial operations and maintenance communities. This is fuelled by pressures to improve supply chain interoperability, unify IT/OT data across enterprise systems, implement digital twins and product life cycle modelling, and provide traceability. All of these need contextualised, machine-interpretable data.
Despite increasing interest from industrial enterprises, leadership understanding of knowledge management, the availability of semantic specialists, and workforce education are barriers. Pilots go well but implementation at scale in the enterprise remains challenging.
This workshop brings together practitioners willing to share their experiences of implementing SWT in industrial enterprises with those who may be stepping into this area and researchers interested in translating their work to impact.
Industry users are constrained by the same, or similar, engineering standards and use many of the same OT/IT systems, so we anticipate a useful and relevant exchange of ideas.
Our goals are to identify lessons learned, explore strategies to improve capabilities, lower the barrier to entry, and identify risks to implementations.
An output of this workshop will be a position paper with recommendations for the ESWC community and a new practitioner network for industrial SWT.
Workshop Description
Why now
Industry uptake increases when international standards are available. The emergence of ISO/DIS 23726 Part 3 (Industrial Data Ontology), the IOF Core Ontology, and RDF-compliant reference data libraries provides the necessary foundation for implementation.
Cloud-native knowledge graph tooling is now widely available, and enterprises increasingly view ontologies as the backbone for enterprise-grade RAG and LLM grounding.
Audience and value
The workshop targets researchers, consultants, vendors, managers, software developers, architects, data scientists, and engineers. Attendees gain practical lessons learned, risk awareness, and peer connections.
Making it memorable
The workshop is industry-focused with real-world examples and significant discussion time. Anonymous participation via Menti encourages open questions and honest maturity assessments.
Related workshops
This is a new workshop, though the organisers have run similar data.conversations workshops hosted by the UWA Data Institute:
https://uwadatainstitute.org.au/2024-data-conversations/
Organising Committee
Dr. Caitlin Woods
- Affiliation: The University of Western Australia
- Email: caitlin.woodsa@uwa.edu.au
- Bio: Ontology engineer with industry experience across mining, manufacturing, and technology sectors. Member of the IOF Maintenance Working Group and Australian representative on ISO WG26.
Prof. Melinda Hodkiewicz
- Affiliation: The University of Western Australia
- Email: melinda.hodkiewicz@uwa.edu.au
- Bio: Professor of Engineering applying NLP, knowledge graphs, and ontologies to industrial maintenance and safety. Fellow of ATSE and PHM Society.
Workshop Format
Duration: Half-day (~3 hours)
| Session | Description | Time | Lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opening | Introductions | 15 min | MH |
| Anonymous quiz | Menti maturity survey | 10 min | MH |
| SWT in industry | What works and why | 40 min | CW |
| Discussion | Open discussion | 20 min | CW |
| Break | Coffee | 15 min | |
| SWT ecosystem | Risks and coordination | 40 min | MH |
| Discussion | Open discussion | 20 min | MH |
| Wrap up | Key learnings | 10 min | CW, MH |