KEYWORDS: Manufacturing Ontology, Internet of Things for Manufacturing, Semanticweb technologies for industry 4.0, Manufacturing organization development.In the field of computer science and artificial intelligence (AI), ontology and semanticweb discipline broadly refers to formal naming and definition of the types, properties,and interrelationships of the entities that really or fundamentally exist for a particulardomain of discourse. In our study on ontology adoption, we have chosen manufacturingas our domain of interest. We had initially conducted a pilot study with 30 seniormanagement leaders including CXOs (senior management) from various manufacturingindustries to understand the driving factors for the adoption of emerging technologiescited above. During due course of our interactions with the leadership team, we foundthat a broader ontology is needed for demonstration purpose before conducting a detailedsurvey and performing further analyses. Hence we designed a basic ontology and thenshowed the interview participants how that could be extended further to meet specificneeds of an organization. We enhanced our study further by conducting an elaboratesurvey with manufacturing industry practitioners in the field of emerging technologiessuch as AI (ontology, semantics) and Internet of Things (IoT). Out of 150 surveyresponses requested, we had received 120 responses in return from 48 manufacturingorganizations representing the sub sectors such as aerospace, automotive, energy andutilities, retail, mining and minerals etc. The key finding from the survey analysis wasthat factors such as perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and willingness to adopthave positive influence to the actual adoption of ontology and semantic web inmanufacturing organizations. The study used three approaches namely ontology metrics,design pattern blueprint for validating the structural aspect of ontology and itsimplementation in two manufacturing companies for validating the reusability. We haveused organization development tools and techniques for action research implementationat global mines and minerals major (FLSmidth) and thermal power plant (Hekinanislands) and organizational development outcome has been measured in terms of theoperational efficiency and cost effectiveness.