Is the Ontological Approach for the Grade Concept a Necessity for Successful Product Profitability Calculation in a Paper Mill?

This article creates a generic grade concept that is a synthesis of wide range of terminologies linked with different paper types produced in paper mills. Nearly all paper mills and their system providers define the type and concepts of paper in different ways. The starting point in the grade concept is that it supports the diversified and reliable product profitability calculation as much as possible. Due to the complex nature of grade concept in the paper mills, ontology is used to achieve formal and explicit format for its definition. The formality is understood as an exact description of the concept, which in this article means a mathematical model for the product profitability calculation. The explicit approach means that the concept can be run in a computer by using the third normal mode entity relationship charts (ER). The functionality of the equations is demonstrated by a numerical example.