The PERKS Project has released the second and final version of its Procedural Knowledge Management (PKM) tools. Building on the foundations of the first release, the updated tools introduce enhanced governance mechanisms, advanced lifecycle management, improved user interfaces, and stronger interoperability for industrial environments.

At the core of this release are three key components: the Procedural Knowledge Ontology (PKO) v2.0, the Procedural Knowledge Management System (PKMS), and the Procedural Knowledge Auditing framework. Together, these technologies enable organizations to transform procedures from static documents into governed and machine-understandable digital assets that can support execution guidance, traceability, compliance, and integration with AI-enabled services. 

Traditionally, procedures are distributed across manuals, spreadsheets, PDFs, and isolated information systems, making them difficult to search, update, govern, and reuse. The second release of the PERKS PKM tools addresses these challenges by combining knowledge graphs enabled by Semantic Web standards, governance-aware access control, and auditing capabilities into a unified platform. Procedural knowledge can now be managed throughout its entire lifecycle, from creation and approval to execution, revision, and auditing. 

The enhanced PKMS introduces several important capabilities: 

  • Governed Procedural Knowledge Management: Procedures are managed as knowledge graph assets, with support for lifecycle management, controlled evolution, status tracking, and traceability of changes. 
  • Fine-Grained Access Control: The platform now supports procedure-level permissions, combining role-based access control with policy-based governance rules. Users can also request access to restricted procedures through dedicated workflows. 
  • Version Management and Traceability: Organizations can create, compare, restore, and browse different versions of procedures while maintaining a complete history of changes and approvals. 
  • Advanced Metadata Catalogue: Improved search, filtering, comparison, and visualization capabilities allow users to efficiently discover and access procedures and related digital artefacts. 
  • Procedural Knowledge Data Product: The platform exposes procedural knowledge through documented APIs and interoperable semantic descriptions, enabling integration with downstream applications, analytics tools, conversational assistants, and future AI agents. 

A major milestone of this release is also the publication of PKO v2.0, which extends the ontology with new concepts for access control policies, procedure requirements, requirement satisfaction, procedure templates, status-change tracking, auditing, and signal-based verification of procedure execution. The ontology continues to be openly available and has already attracted interest from external organizations and research initiatives beyond the PERKS project. 

In parallel, the enhanced Auditing framework provides end-to-end traceability of both procedural knowledge extraction and procedure execution. The new release introduces user-friendly audit dashboards, execution overviews, lifecycle visualizations, version tracking, advanced querying capabilities, and integration with the Procedural Knowledge Ontology, enabling organizations to investigate how procedures were created, modified, approved, and executed over time. 

"The second release of the PERKS procedural knowledge management tools moves beyond simple storage of procedures and establishes procedural knowledge as a governed, traceable, and reusable enterprise asset. By combining knowledge graphs, access-control policies, lifecycle management, and auditing capabilities, we enable organizations to manage procedures with the same level of control and transparency that they apply to other critical business assets." said Mario Scrocca, Technical Coordinator of the PERKS Project. 

By transforming procedures into governed digital assets, the PERKS Project demonstrates how organizations can improve knowledge sharing, compliance, operational efficiency, and AI readiness. The second release provides the foundations for a new generation of procedural knowledge systems where humans, software applications, and intelligent agents can securely access and exploit trusted procedural knowledge across organizational boundaries. 

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