Ontologies attract growing interest as a mean for semantic integration of knowledge, applications, models and systems. This particularly applies to the ICT and automation intensive industries. The paper discusses possible novel ontology-aided solutions for managing manufacturing and logistics operations, which result from a foresight research of industries. The professionals from European companies along semi-structured interviewing and brainstorming provided a range of suggestions, mostly in terms of functional requirements. Some novel solutions have been derived and conceptualized this way.