1 Copyright © 2012 by ASME Proceedings of the ASME Congress2012 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition IMECE 2012 November 9-15, 2012, Houston, TX, USA IMECE2012-89475 METHODOLOGY FOR THE ECONOMIC VIABILITY OF COMPANIES IN THE SEMANTIC ADAPTATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS Elsa Marcelino-Jesus Faculdade de Ciências da Economia e da Empresa Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa 1349-001 Lisboa, Portugal Joao Sarraipa CTS, UNINOVA, Dep.º de Eng.ª Electrotécnica, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, FCT, Universidade Nova de Lisboa 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal Mário Antão Faculdade de Ciências da Economia e da Empresa Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa 1349-001 Lisboa, Portugal Ricardo Jardim-Goncalves CTS, UNINOVA, Dep.º de Eng.ª Electrotécnica, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, FCT, Universidade Nova de Lisboa 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal João Mendonça da Silva CT2M - Departmento de Engenharia Mecânica – Escola de Engenharia Universidade do Minho 4800-048 Guimarães, Portugal ABSTRACT In the current globalized and competitive business world it has become increasingly more important that companies adapt their knowledge bases, in order to establish more dynamic business partnerships. However, one of the main problems found in the establishment of such partnerships has to do with the lack of interoperability between technologic systems, especially those related to the semantic of shared knowledge. The integration and sharing of the knowledge representation elements of companies, performs a key role in the research challenges in the business interoperability area. The paper presents a methodology to analyse the economic viability of companies in the needed effort to the conception of a common knowledge base in their operational domain area, in order to stimulate interoperability in the business cooperation. These studies also have as objective to support the development of the thesis that argues that in the future, the capability to adapt the semantics of business information systems will promote collaboration between companies, providing them new business opportunities. KEYWORDS Interoperability; Semantic Interoperability; Ontologies; Shared Knowledge; Business Collaboration; Economic Viability. INTRODUCTION In the current global and competitive context, for mostly enterprises doing business globally has become critical to their survival. Additionally, enterprises, both big and small, need to establish cooperation agreements with others to follow the current tendencies and offer innovative products and services [1]. Companies began to realize that it is important to stop "playing" by themselves and begin to cooperate or interact with others to be able to answer to customer needs. Collaboration also helps small businesses to join efforts to produce products that can compete with products from large companies [2]. The collaboration models shall focus on semantically enabled peers to facilitate e-collaboration by building added value and mutual trust in diverse European business, cultural and language environments. It means defining business processes and rules for companies and users to participate in a Single European Electronic Market (SEEM). The SEEM intendeds to be an e-Business space where companies of any kind, size and geographic location can work and collaborate without relevant constraints, and supporting the establishment of value-creation relationships while ensuring a high level of security, trust and confidence together with a highly scalable and flexible infrastructure [3]. However, these collaborations arise with problems that are particularly related with the lack of interoperable systems and software applications that manage and contribute to progress in business with each other [4][5]. To succeed in such complex