IEC 62656-5:2017

Standardized product ontology register and transfer by spreadsheets - Part 5: Interface for activity description

IEC 62656-5:2017 specifies a method for representing activities and relations among the activities by a tabular ontology representation, called “parcellized activity model” or PAM for short, which is a specialized use of a generic tabular ontology data model, known as the parcellized ontology model (POM) defined in Part 1 of the IEC 62656 series. The activities that can be described by this document include part or whole of an enterprise, an organization or a collection of services, a set of events or processes which interact with each other by exchanging physical or non-physical entities. This part of IEC 62656 also defines a method for uniquely identifying activities, or their homologues happenings in a certain sequence. In addition, this document identifies flows of information, objects or materials exchanged among activities, where each of the activities is represented by a class and each flow by a relation.

Enregistrement d'ontologie de produits normalisés et transfert par tableurs - Partie 5: Interface pour la description des activités

L’IEC 62656-5:2017 définit une méthode permettant de représenter les activités et leurs interrelations, par une représentation d’ontologie tabulaire appelée “modèle d’activité par paquet” ou PAM. Il s’agit d’une utilisation spécialisée d’un modèle tabulaire générique de données d’ontologie, désigné par modèle d’ontologie par paquet (POM) et défini dans la Partie 1 de la série IEC 62656. Les activités qui peuvent être décrites par le présent document concernent une partie ou la totalité des activités d’une entreprise, d’une organisation ou d'un ensemble de services, un ensemble d’événements ou de processus qui interagissent en échangeant des entités physiques ou non physiques. La présente partie de l’IEC 62656 définit également une méthode permettant d’identifier les activités de façon unique, ou leurs équivalents se produisant selon une séquence donnée. De plus, le présent document identifie les flux d’informations, d’objets ou de matériaux échangés entre les activités, chaque activité étant représentée par une classe et chaque flux par une relation.

General Information

• Status: Published
• Publication Date: 18-Jun-2017
• ICS: 01.040.01 - Generalities. Terminology. Standardization. Documentation (Vocabularies)
• ICS: 01.110 - Technical product documentation
• Technical Committee: SC 3D - Classes, Properties and Identification of products - Common Data Dictionary (CDD)
• Drafting Committee: MT 62656-5 - TC 3/SC 3D/MT 62656-5
• Current Stage: PPUB - Publication issued
• Start Date: 07-Jun-2017
• Completion Date: 19-Jun-2017

Overview

IEC 62656-5:2017 is an international standard developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) that specifies a method for representing and transferring activity descriptions through spreadsheets. This standard introduces the Parcellized Activity Model (PAM), a specialized form of the Parcellized Ontology Model (POM) defined in Part 1 of the IEC 62656 series. The PAM focuses on describing activities and their relations in a tabular ontology format, enabling clear representation of complex processes, organizational functions, and service collections.

The standard defines how activities-ranging from entire enterprises to discrete events or processes-interact with each other by exchanging physical or non-physical entities such as information, materials, or objects. A key feature of IEC 62656-5:2017 is its method for uniquely identifying activities and sequencing them properly, supporting comprehensive process modeling and management.

Key Topics

• Parcellized Activity Model (PAM): A tabular ontology representation used to model activities and their relationships in a structured and standardized way.
• Activity Description Interface: Enables users to describe activities, subactivities, and their interactions in a spreadsheet format conducive to data interchange.
• Activity Identification: The method provides unique identifiers for activities and sequences for homologous happenings to ensure clarity and prevent ambiguity in activity records.
• Flows and Relations: Defines the flows of information, objects, or materials exchanged between activities through relations and arrows that represent interactions.
• Extended Semantics: Includes advanced modeling constructs such as conjunction, disjunction, selection nodes, and decision trees to represent complex activity scenarios beyond traditional methods.
• Integration with IDEF0: Supports graphical representation corresponding to IDEF0 notation, a widely used process modeling standard, enabling interoperability between tabular and diagrammatic activity descriptions.
• Meta-Properties and Formula Delegation: Establishes meta-properties for detailed activity properties and supports delegated formula interpretation to enhance semantic richness.
• International Concept Identifier (ICID): Facilitates globally unique identification of concepts to promote consistency and interoperability in multi-organizational environments.

Applications

IEC 62656-5:2017 provides a practical framework for industries and organizations aiming to standardize the description and exchange of activity-based data. Its applications include:

• Enterprise Process Modeling: Helps businesses document, analyze, and improve workflows, enabling clearer understanding and optimization of operational structures.
• Manufacturing Operations: Supports production management by modeling production processes, material flows, and service interfaces, aiding in integration with standards such as IEC 62264.
• Service-Oriented Architecture: Models interactions and exchanges within service networks, facilitating coordination and data exchange across organizational boundaries.
• Information Systems Integration: Enables consistent activity data exchange between different IT systems by leveraging spreadsheet-based ontology registers.
• Business Process Interoperability: Enhances collaboration between partners by providing a standardized interface for activity description, improving synchronization and reducing misunderstanding.
• Compliance and Documentation: Assists in maintaining documentation consistent with international standards for quality management, auditing, and regulatory compliance.

Related Standards

• IEC 62656 Series: The broader series addresses standardized ontology register and transfer methods, where Part 1 defines the generic Parcellized Ontology Model (POM) foundational for this part.
• IEC 62264: International standard for enterprise-control system integration, which complements PAM by defining production operations management models described using IEC 62656-5.
• IDEF0: A functional modeling methodology used for describing manufacturing functions, processes, and systems. IEC 62656-5’s alignment with IDEF0 enables visualization of activity models.
• ISO/IEC 19510 (BPMN): Business Process Model and Notation standard for process modeling that may be integrated or mapped with the ontology models described in IEC 62656-5.
• ISO 15926: For process plants data integration, which shares the goal of ontology-based standardized data exchange and could intersect with IEC 62656 use cases.

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Keywords: IEC 62656-5, Parcellized Activity Model, PAM, standardized product ontology, activity description interface, spreadsheet ontology transfer, process modeling, enterprise activities, IDEF0 integration, activity identification, production operations management, IEC standards, ontology register, tabular ontology model, international concept identifier, information flow model, service process documentation.

Standards Content (Sample)

IEC 62656-5 ®
Edition 1.0 2017-06
INTERNATIONAL
STANDARD
NORME
INTERNATIONALE
colour
inside
Standardized product ontology register and transfer by spreadsheets –
Part 5: Interface for activity description

Enregistrement d'ontologie de produits normalisés et transfert par tableurs –
Partie 5: Interface pour la description des activités

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IEC 62656-5 ®
Edition 1.0 2017-06
INTERNATIONAL
STANDARD
NORME
INTERNATIONALE
colour
inside
Standardized product ontology register and transfer by spreadsheets –

Part 5: Interface for activity description

Enregistrement d'ontologie de produits normalisés et transfert par tableurs –

Partie 5: Interface pour la description des activités

INTERNATIONAL
ELECTROTECHNICAL
COMMISSION
COMMISSION
ELECTROTECHNIQUE
INTERNATIONALE
ICS 01.040.01; 01.110 ISBN 978-2-8322-4369-5

– 2 – IEC 62656-5:2017 © IEC 2017
CONTENTS
FOREWORD . 4
1 Scope . 6
2 Normative references . 7
3 Terms, definitions and abbreviations . 7
3.1 Terms and definitions. 7
3.2 Abbreviations . 9
4 Overview . 9
4.1 Activity described as an ontology . 9
4.2 Use cases and key technical concepts . 10
4.3 Relation among properties of different activities . 14
4.4 International Concept Identifier (ICID) . 14
5 Basic structure of the PAM . 14
5.1 Activity and arrows. 14
5.2 Subactivities . 15
5.2.1 General . 15
5.2.2 Specialized activity . 15
5.2.3 Component activity . 15
5.3 ICOM representation . 16
5.4 Role of the mechanism (M) in the PAM . 16
5.5 External function call . 17
5.6 Basic PAM notation with function symbols . 17
5.7 Joining arrows . 20
5.8 Forking arrows . 21
5.9 Branching or joining of arrows . 21
5.10 Transcendental arrows . 22
5.10.1 General . 22
5.10.2 Modelling incoming arrows . 24
5.10.3 Modelling outgoing arrows . 24
5.10.4 Modelling connections of arrows at frame boundary . 25
5.10.5 Contracted form of representation for branching and joining arrows . 26
5.10.6 Domain or codomain overloading for transcendent arrows . 27
5.11 Extended semantics beyond IDEF0 . 28
5.11.1 Specialized types of activity and its icon . 28
5.11.2 Conjunction node . 30
5.11.3 Disjunction node . 30
5.11.4 Complementation node . 31
5.11.5 Selection node . 31
5.11.6 Transformation node . 31
5.11.7 Decision tree . 31
5.12 Graphic properties of arrows . 31
5.13 Arrow specialization . 31
5.14 Delegated formula interpretation . 32
Annex A (normative) Meta-properties for activity description . 34
A.1 General . 34
A.2 List of meta-properties . 34
Annex B (informative) Description examples for the PAM . 37

B.1 Design product. 37
B.2 Sample IDEF0 Diagram . 48
Annex C (informative) Example PAM data for production operations management . 51
Bibliography . 59

Figure 1 – See fine arts at Museum . 11
Figure 2 – Production operations management (extracted from IEC 62264-3) . 12
Figure 3 – Production operations management modelled in PAM and depicted as IDEF-
0 diagram . 13
Figure 4 – Basic activity and its subcomponents . 16
Figure 5 – Corresponding IDEF0 diagram for basic PAM notation . 18
Figure 6 – Sample activity drawing in IDEF0 and ICOM . 19
Figure 7 – Subactivities and arrows . 19
Figure 8 – Joining arrow example . 20
Figure 9 – Forking arrow example . 22
Figure 10 – Transcendental arrows to be taken over by child nodes . 23
Figure 11 – Transcendental arrows from the parent node . 23
Figure 12 – IDEF0 extension for specialized activity node in the PAM . 29
Figure 13 – An implementation example of Conjunction node in the PAM . 30
Figure 14 – Super relation and its application for specialized activity . 32
Figure B.1 – Class meta-class example of the PAM for “design product” activity . 38
Figure B.2 – Property meta-class example of the PAM for “design product” activity . 40
Figure B.3 – Relation meta-class example of the PAM for “design product” activity . 42
Figure B.4 – IDEF0 diagram image corresponding to A-0 (frame containing A0) . 49
Figure B.5 – IDEF0 diagram image corresponding to A0 (frame containing subactivities
of A0) . 50
Figure C.1 – Class meta-class example for production operations management defined
in IEC 62264-3 . 52
Figure C.2 – Property meta-class example for production operations management
defined in IEC 62264-3 . 53
Figure C.3 – Relation meta-class example for production operations management
defined in IEC 62264-3 . 54
Figure C.4 – Autogenerated IDEF 0 A-0 (top) node for production operations
management defined in IEC 62264-3 . 57
Figure C.5 – Autogenerated IDEF A0 node for production operations management
defined in IEC 62264-3 . 58

Table 1 – Basic PAM notation for arrows . 18
Table 2 – Extracts of relation meta-class definitions for activities . 26
Table 3 – Contracted representation for connectivity of activities . 28
Table 4 – Reserved keywords for formula interpretation . 33
Table A.1 – Meta-properties of relation meta-class used for activity description . 35

– 4 – IEC 62656-5:2017 © IEC 2017
INTERNATIONAL ELECTROTECHNICAL COMMISSION
____________
STANDARDIZED PRODUCT ONTOLOGY REGISTER
AND TRANSFER BY SPREADSHEETS –

Part 5: Interface for activity description

FOREWORD
1) The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is a worldwide organization for standardization comprising
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International Standard IEC 62656-5 has been prepared by subcommittee 3D: Product
properties and classes and their identification, of IEC technical committee 3: Information
structures and elements, identification and marking principles, documentation and graphical
symbols.
The text of this International Standard is based on the following documents:
CDV Report on voting
3D/257/CDV 3D/287/RVC
Full information on the voting for the approval of this International Standard can be found in
the report on voting indicated in the above table.
This document has been drafted in accordance with the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2.

A list of all parts in the IEC 62656 series, published under the general title Standardized
product ontology register and transfer by spreadsheets, can be found on the IEC website.
The committee has decided that the contents of this publication will remain unchanged until
the stability date indicated on the IEC website under "http://webstore.iec.ch" in the data
related to the specific publication. At this date, the publication will be
• reconfirmed,
• withdrawn,
• replaced by a revised edition, or
• amended.
IMPORTANT – The 'colour inside' logo on the cover page of this publication indicates
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– 6 – IEC 62656-5:2017 © IEC 2017
STANDARDIZED PRODUCT ONTOLOGY REGISTER
AND TRANSFER BY SPREADSHEETS –

Part 5: Interface for activity description

1 Scope
This part of IEC 62656 specifies a method for representing activities and relations among the
activities by a tabular ontology representation, called “parcellized activity model” or PAM for
short, which is a specialized use of a generic tabular ontology data model, known as the
parcellized ontology model (POM) defined in Part 1 of the IEC 62656 series. The activities
that can be described by this document include part or whole of an enterprise, an organization
or a collection of services, a set of events or processes which interact with each other by
exchanging physical or non-physical entities. This part of IEC 62656 also defines a method for
uniquely identifying activities, or their homologues happenings in a certain sequence. In
addition, this document identifies flows of information, objects or materials exchanged among
activities, where each of the activities is represented by a class and each flow by a relation.
Consequently, this document enables characterization, classification, and identification of a
set of activities as part of a normalized ontology. And this enables registering of a pattern of
activities as a set of metadata and uploading it onto the IEC 61360 Common Data Dictionary
(CDD), maintained as an online database of the electrotechnical concepts.
Additionally, this part of IEC 62656 provides a method to integrate ontologies of products and
activities including services, in a single model. This means a product can be analyzed in its
operational context for service. Such an integrated view will help people of different technical
backgrounds to see and share knowledge about the extent of an enterprise that requires the
products and services as indispensable resources. Such a data representation will also help
analyse the key functionalities of an enterprise and its available resources, with clear
definitions, limitations and interactions among them, when people are required to respond or
react to a new external condition or situation in a short time frame, in particular, at an
emergency or natural hazard.
Meanwhile, this part of IEC62656 does not intend to provide a detailed algorithmic description
of a flow of information, timing chart of processes, or sequential ordering of events that will be
necessary in a software design or programming phase of an information system that handles
activities or events. These detailed specifications of the algorithms and associated
construction of the data structures are left to the realm of software engineering methodology
and tools where there are so many schools and styles already, such as UML (Unified
Modelling Language), BPMN, SysML, DFD, IDEF, and other CASE (Computer Aided Software
Engineering) tools.
This International Standard neither intends to standardize nor introduce a new method of
graphic description for activities or processes. Ideally, an ontology of activities modelled by
this International Standard must be expressible by a number of existing graphical presentation
tools and process description languages for activities.
Nevertheless, some graphical presentations in the style of such tools or languages are helpful
for making the people understand the content of the PAM, and therefore, they are used in this
International Standard. In most of the cases, IDEF-0 is preferred for the purpose, because it
describes both activities and flows of things among the activities, but any other choices of
tools or languages can be made, wherever they are appropriate and relevant.

2 Normative references
The following documents are referred to in the text in such a way that some or all of their
content constitutes requirements of this document. For dated references, only the edition
cited applies. For undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including
any amendments) applies.
IEC 61360-2:2012, Standard data element types with associated classification scheme for
electric components - Part 2: EXPRESS dictionary schema
IEC 61360-4, Standard data element types with associated classification scheme for electric
components – Part 4: IEC reference collection of standard data element types and component
classes (available at http://cdd.iec.ch/)
IEC 62656-1, Standardized product ontology register and transfer by spreadsheets – Part 1:
Logical structure for data parcels
IEC 62264-3:2007, Enterprise control system integration – Part 3: Activity models of
manufacturing operations management
ISO 13584-24, Industrial automation systems and integration – Parts library – Part 24: Logical
resource: Logical model of supplier library
ISO 13584-42:2010, Industrial automation systems and integration – Parts library – Part 42:
Description methodology: Methodology for structuring part families
3 Terms, definitions and abbreviations
3.1 Terms and definitions
For the purpose of this document, the terms and definitions given in ISO 13584-24 and
IEC 62656-1, as well as the following apply.
ISO and IEC maintain terminological databases for use in standardization at the following
addresses:
• IEC Electropedia: available at http://www.electropedia.org/
• ISO Online browsing platform: available at http://www.iso.org/obp
3.1.1
activity
organizational, logical or conceptual unit for performing a set of specific actions or
functionalities
Note 1 to entry: An activity can be just for performing one action or functionality, and in an extreme case, for zero
action or functionality, meaning the activity is just an endpoint for terminating activities.
Note 2 to entry: An activity is not necessarily a process in time sequence in the PAM. Two or more activities may
concurrently work and interact with each other.
3.1.2
arrow
mapping from one category of things to another, yielding an information flow, a movement of
physical items, a change of states from one state to another, or a directional correspondence
from one collection of things to another, which is embodied as a functional relation
Note 1 to entry: Arrow as an information construct in this part of IEC 62656 embodies an mathematical entity
named “arrow” originating in the category theory of mathematics, which is synonymous with function, but maps
elements of one collection specified as “domain” to another collection specified as ”codomain”, with a strong sense
of direction.
– 8 – IEC 62656-5:2017 © IEC 2017
Note 2 to entry: Arrows can also be used in a formula, such as in FX: × X ×× X → X where an
12 nn+1
arrow exists as the mapping F from an n-ary set XX× ×× X to X .
12 n n+1
3.1.3
arrow overloading
specialization of an arrow by narrowing or detailing either one of or both of the domain and
codomain of the arrow, being considered as a function
Note 1 to entry: Overloading of an arrow typically takes place on the frame boundary of a diagram in a lower node
of an activity.
3.1.4
aspect
way things appear, are looked at or expressed as an association among properties, classes,
or ontological elements in general, by the use of a relation
Note 1 to entry: A property may belong to one or several aspects.
3.1.5
branching point
forking point
point from which an arrow forks out into two or more arrows
3.1.6
connection point
point at which arrows or lines fork out, or at which several arrows or lines meet each other
Note 1 to entry: Both branching point and junction points are included in the connection points.
3.1.7
IDEF0
Integration Definition for Function Modelling
graphical language to model decisions, actions, and activities of an organization or system,
defined in the IDEF series of data modelling methods
Note 1 to entry: IDEF0 was once adopted as Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 183 by ANSI
(American National Standards Institute). However, it was withdrawn from FIPS in 2012, for it is no longer
necessary to designate only one method among many as the graphical language for modelling activities.
Note 2 to entry: This note applies to the French language only.
3.1.8
ontology
shared and formal modelling of knowledge about a domain
3.1.9
parcellized ontology model
POM
formal specification of being of things as a concept, including state of things and configuration
of things, by their properties and relations, formed in a set of relational tables each of which
represents a category of the ontological entities
Note 1 to entry: Parcellized ontology model is formally specified in IEC 62656-1.
Note 2 to entry: Examples of the categories of the ontological entities are class, property, relation, datatype, unit
of measurement, etc., which are essential constructs for the description of being.
Note 3 to entry: This note applies to the French language only.

3.1.10
parcellized activity model
PAM
specialized use of the parcellized ontology model defined in IEC 62656-1 for representing an
activity as part of an ontology
Note 1 to entry: This note applies to the French language only.
3.1.11
service
activity performed or being performed for the purpose of someone or something
Note 1 to entry: Usually an activity is performed else than for oneself or for itself.
3.1.12
subactivity
subcomponent of an activity
Note 1 to entry: One activity can be broken down into several subactivities. They can be a set of diachronical
divisions of an activity, as well as a set of synchronical divisions of an activity. For example, a collaborative work
done by different task forces of an enterprise.
3.1.13
transcendent arrow
arrow that enters into an activity and interacts with some or all of its subactivities
Note 1 to entry: A transcendent arrow may be forking into multiple arrows or joining another in a lower node frame.
3.2 Abbreviations
For the purposes of this document, the following abbreviations apply.
BPML Business Process Modelling Language
BPEL Business Process Execution Language
BPMN Business Process Modelling Notation
CDD Common Data Dictionary
DFD Data Flow Diagram
KPI Key Performance Indicator
POM Parcellized Ontology Model
SysML Systems Modelling Language
UML Unified Modelling Language
4 Overview
4.1 Activity described as an ontology
According to an acknowledged web resource, ontology is an explicit and formal specification
of conceptualization in a domain. If ontology is such, then an activity should be definitely a
part of the ontology. For an activity usually has an objective, ways and means to achieve the
objective, person or organization to be engaged, time, financial constraints and requirements
to be observed. In addition, an activity has a relationship to other activities, having them as
prior or posterior activities with which it may exchange information, goods or material. Such
an activity may have child or subactivities that assume part of the role or objectives of the
main activity. Moreover, some patterns of activities are repeatedly performed, so they can be
considered as a model and its instances. Furthermore, an activity is often a collaborative
process conducted in plural languages by different peoples of different countries on different
continents, with a plethora of cultural backgrounds and traditions. In consequence, there are
ample needs and necessities to share understanding about activities in an internationally

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normalized manner with their identification, canonical properties and concepts being
expressed in a machine sensible way.
The parcellized activity model (PAM) is a specialized use of the parcellized ontology model
(POM), defined in IEC 62656-1, for the purpose of modelling an activity or a set of activities
and possible interactions among them, with the data structure provided by the latter standard.
In the PAM, activities are expressed by classes whilst the flows of information, goods and
materials among activities are expressed by functional relations, with which not just
information flow but also the flow of products, materials and personnel can be included into
the scope of the model. This contrasts clearly with some other activity models that allow only
the information to be exchanged among the activities. However, the PAM is not intended as a
language for graphical presentation of the activities; for such a purpose there are already
BPML, BPEL, BPNM, IEDF0 and DFD, etc. Neither, the model is intended as a means to write
a flow chart or algorithmic diagram for designing a specific software application. Rather it is
designed to share a common understanding about the characteristics of activities and the
relations among them as a set of metadata, in other words, classes and properties of an
ontology expressible in a standard format of ontology, which allows text based queries. Yet
the metadata are also expected to be in a way translatable and graphically reproducible in at
least one of the graphical presentation languages of activities, or in an appropriate
combination of them. Here, the language we selected for primary translation is IDEF0. But the
PAM is not a data model exclusive to the language. Rather, it is designed as a means to
coordinate ontologies of products, services and activities together. Thus it is a prerequisite
that the description by the PAM must be well coordinated with the ontologies of products and
materials that have been stored and maintained in the common metadata registry of IEC, i.e.,
the IEC 61360-4 DB, or so called “IEC CDD” or sometimes more simply, “CDD”(Common Data
Dictionary), for which the Parcel series of standards provides input and output interfaces and
its model extension.
4.2 Use cases and key technical concepts
The principal applications of this document might be in the field of engineering. However,
importance of guiding or assisting people in visiting places by handy electrotechnic means is
not limited to the engineering, but well recognized for a wide range of industrial activities,
including process automation, agriculture, fishery, hazard prevention, jurisdiction, defence,
transportation, medicine, nursery and tourism. Whilst a pattern of specialized engineering
activities is comprehensible only within a limited number of experts of the domain, a holiday
visit to an art museum can be understood by much a larger audience or readers. Thus, for
illustration purpose, an activity to “see fine arts at museum” is picked up for the first example
in 4.3 as an exemplary use case, because most of the readers must have visited some
museum more than once to see fine arts in their lifetime. And we expect they must have had a
similar experience, seeing different genres of arts at different locations where local people
speak different languages. En suite, we deliver a use case that lies in the midst of the process
automation, i.e., an ontological description of a segment of the activities of enterprise-control
system integration, described in IEC 62264-3, which latter is often touted as a cornerstone of
the smart manufacturing.
Figure 1 illustrates how a touristic activity to see fine arts at a museum can be modelled as an
ontology. Under a generic activity named “See fine arts at museum”, there are two types of
hierarchy; one is a “specialization tree” or so called “is-a” tree that has a small open triangle
at the head of the relation line in the diagram, another is a “composition tree” or “part-of” tree
that shows how an activity can be decomposed into sub-parts, which is represented by a
relation line with a black diamond at the head. Of course, properties that are held by a generic
activity shall be inherited into specialized activities in the case of specialization hierarchy. In
the given case, the activity to “see fine arts at museum” may have, for example, “language(s)
for arts description”, “admission fee”, “open hours”, and “genres of arts” and they are
uniformly inherited into specialized activities, such as an activity to “see fine arts at American
museum”, to “see fine arts at French museum”, to “see fine arts at Japanese museum”, and to
“see fine arts at Spanish museum” in the same way. Ultimately at all leaf nodes, be it an
activity to see arts at a globally renowned big French museums like Musée du Louvre or
Musée d'Orsay, or to see some select arts at a Japanese city local museum of a reasonable
scale, like the ones at Kagoshima city museum of arts, the properties are inherited from the

generic activity to “see fine arts at Museum” in the same manner. Only the parametric values
of them are different. In addition to those inherited properties, there shall be some native
properties that distinguish one activity from another. In exception of those properties, basic
components of the activities of the generic activity, depicted as yellow boxes in Figure 1, are
the same as those specialized activities at leaf nodes; for basically at every museum, you
have to get a ticket or pass, then get admitted into an exhibition, visit some art halls in series,
then you may exit from the exhibition at one of the art halls. Note that an arrow means people
spread among activity boxes (marked in yellow) move from one activity at the source of an
arrow to another at the destination of the arrow, rather than a description of a sequence of
actions for one person.
Figure 2 shows a typical example of a set of standardized industrial activities extracted from
IEC 62264-3 (Figure 14 in the original) that is expressed by means of DFD. Figure 3 is a
figure in IDEF0 which corresponds to Figure 2, and in line with the PAM specification
according to IEC 62656-5. According to IEC 62264-3, all production activities in
manufacturing can be patterned after the model depicted in Figure 2, and each specialized
manufacturing should be adequately explained by a specialization of the diagram. Here, the
readers should not misconstrue the objective of this use case; it is not intended to claim that
the content of IEC 62264-3 is replaceable by a functionality of the PAM. Rather it is simply to
state that significant part of the semantic content of IEC 62264-3 can be translated and
reproduced in a form of ontology data and can be stored and maintained in IEC CDD by
means of the PAM, which enables interaction and cross references with the related product
definitions stored in the CDD. Incidentally, the readers are reminded that the internal
communication flows, such as operational commands, depicted in Figure 2 between the
current level (level 3) of enterprise-control and the level 1 and level 2 functions according to
the respective definitions in IEC 62264-3 are removed from Figure 3 because they shall be
elaborated when the “Production execution management” indexed as A5 in Figure 3 is
unfolded into subactivities in the PAM, as a base node for unfolding. Since the PAM itself is
not a graphic presentation language for activities, the figures and diagrams are the work
created by tools and applications that interpret the ontology data according to IEC 62656-5.
Nevertheless, In Annex C, a set of sample data according to IEC 62656-5 are included
(Figure C.1 through Figure C.), which semantically correspond to Figure 3. In addition, some
actual examples of auto-generated figures from the PAM are shown in Annex C (Figure C.4
and Figure C.5).
IEC
Figure 1 – See fine arts at Museum

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IEC
Figure 2 – Production operations management (extracted from IEC 62264-3)

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IEC
Figure 3 – Production operations management modelled in PAM and depicted as IDEF-0 diagram

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4.3 Relation among properties of different activities
Since an activity is modelled as a class and each class has properties, there may be several
types of relations, among a set of activities, a set of properties, or a set of activities and
properties. Some of those relations have a direction from a source to a destination, where
both the source and the destination may comprise a collection of activities, whilst some others
have no direction among such entities constrained by the relation. Note that the IDEF0
depicts flows of thing among activities, and does not specify further constraints among
properties of both the source and the destination, thus it deploys a directed relation from a set
of activities to another. This type of relation is realized by a functional relation whilst the non-
directional one is by a predicative relation, both of which are defined in IEC 62656-1. There
are cases, however, where the constraints among the properties of the source and destination
need to be further specified beyond the capability corresponding to IDEF0. The method to
superimpose this detailed relation on another relation expressing a flow is described in 5.13.
4.4 International Concept Identifier (ICID)
The International concept identifier or ICID is defined in IEC 62656-1 as a specialization of
the International Registration Data Identifier (IRDI) defined in ISO/IEC 11179-6, where the
difference is only in the choice of separator characters between the significant parts of the
identifier sequence, i.e., the Registration Authority Identifier (RAI), the Data Identifier (DI),
and the Version Identifier (VI). Namely, the ICID uses a set of pound signs “#” for marking
separation among the parts (for more details, see IEC 62656-1);
ICID:= RAI “#” DI “##” VI “###” NOTE,
where RAI stands for Registration Authority Identifier, DI for Data Identifier and VI for Version
Identifier. The “NOTE” is a string of characters that includes no “#” within and serves as
annotation for users. Besides, the RAI has been traditionally called as “information supplier”
“data supplier” or more simply “supplier” in an old IEC 61360-2 and ISO 13584-42 vocabulary.
However in the case of the POM, the RAI and VI are usually pre-set by “#DEFAULT_
SUPPLIER” and “#DEFAULT_VERSION” instructions for any occurrences in the header part
and “#DEFAULT_DATA_SUPPLIER” and “#DEFAULT_DATA_VERSION” instructions for any
occurrences in the data section, of a Parcel sheet. Thus in the following, RAI and VI are
assumed t
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