The main contribution of this paper is an initial method for automatically exploiting ontology design patterns with the aim of further automating the creation of enterprise ontologies in small-scale application contexts. The focus is so far on developing a fully automated construction method, thereby somewhat reducing the requirements on ontology customization and level of detail. In this paper we present an approach how to use knowledge (patterns) from other areas, like data modeling, knowledge reuse, software analysis and software design, to create ontology patterns. These design patterns are then used within our method for automatically matching and pruning them, in accordance with information extracted from existing knowledge sources within the company in question. Though the method still needs some fine-tuning, it has already been used when creating an enterprise ontology for a suppliercompany within the automotive industry.