ICEIMT'04 The fourth International Conference on Enterprise Integration and Modeling Technologies (ICEIMT’04) has been held together with the workshop on Design of Information Infrastructure Systems for Manufacturing (DIISM) at the University of Toronto, Canada, on October 9-11, 2004. The conference was attended by about 60 people from around the world. A total of 33 papers covered enterprise architectures, models, languages, ontologies, human systems, standardisation and different applications in the area of enterprise integration.
Standardization
for enterprise
integration and interoperability was addressed by 5 papers focusing on
Frameworks, architectures, models and modelling languages:
Richard, principles
for construction and use of enterprise architecture frameworks,
including the
aspect of interoperability of enterprise models as a foundation for
model
interoperability;
Kosanke, standards on framework and modelling languages;
Shorter, thoughts on formal representation of models and model
languages;
Chen et al, the relations between work of the European ATHENA
project
and the standards on frameworks and modelling languages; and Richard
et al,
current work in standardisation and related activities aiming on new
standards
on interoperability of processes and models.
Different
topics on Enterprise Integration relating to enterprise
frameworks,
architectures, models and modelling languages have been discussed in 10
papers:
Goranson, semantic distance between intended and perceived meaning
- a
problem of common understanding in the area of process and model
interchange;
Bernus
& Kalpic, role of knowledge
categories in knowledge sharing
processes and proposal for extensions to previous work;
Berio, further enhancements to
UEML (Unified Enterprise
Modelling Language) starting from the result of the European UEML
project
presenting basic theories as well as current improvements based on a
data
integration perspective;
Schonherr, adaptability as the main target to
solve the problem of enterprise architecture sustainability through a
step by
step multi service integration architecture for handling internal
charging
routines, service monitoring and service life cycle management and
presenting a
prototype of a service management module;
Noran, collaborative networked
organisations (CNO) life cycle meta methodology for integrating diverse
CNO
creation and operation knowledge;
Schmitt et al, framework for
appraisal, design and simulation of e-business transactions;
Giachetti et
al, research framework to
investigate measures of enterprise integration
types like connectivity, information sharing, interoperability,
coordination,
and alignment, which allows to identify technology and/or enterprise
integration method best suited in a given situation;
Li & Williams, the
modified definition of Enterprise Integration through studying and
reclassifying
different approaches based on recent results from the use of the Purdue
Enterprise Reference Architecture has lead to theories of
descriptiveness and
prescriptiveness supporting the newly established concept of Approach 2
Architectures as well as their general requirements;
Molina et al, the
underlying principles and challenges for enterprise modelling and
integration,
and its impact on enterprise networking to establish a coherent vision
for
future research;
Mendez, on strengthening the
enterprise adaptation to changing
markets focusing on the integration between strategic planning and
business
processes, as documented in CEN/ISO
19439 and 19440.
Aspects of Human
Systems have been described by 4
authors:
Weston, development of a conceptual model of manufacturing
enterprises which is based on the characterisation of enterprise
processes like
process classes, resource system types, product flows, and
organisational
views; exemplifying general interoperability needs and to highlight
deficiencies in current enterprise modelling and enterprise
integration,
addressing specifically the modelling of human resources; Mausberg,
team
environment constituents and a proposal of an educational
model/framework to
better foster a team environment aimed on achieving success of projects
or
business processes.
Ponis & Koronis, interdisciplinary
approach of the education system’s
strategic planning process, leading to a proposal of a high-level
reference
model for Human Supply Chain (HSC) integration; and
Byer & Weston, new model
of the team systems engineering life cycle, which includes four main
groupings
of activities corresponding to: ‘design’, ‘build’, ‘operate’ and
‘maintain’
life cycle phases through which a typical team system progresses.
The subject
of Ontology was covered by 3 papers, which present different
topics:
Ohren, an architecture framework ontology providing
characteristics
for
comparing
enterprise architecture frameworks, and presenting results from the
comparison
of six existing frameworks (FEAF -
US Federal Government, DoD AF - US Department of Defense,
TEAF of US Department of Treasury, TOGAF, of OMG) GERAM of IFAC/IFIP
Task Force
and Zachman);
Gruninger, applying ontologies to semantic integration
through the process specification language PSL;
Huang & Fox, proposing
knowledge provenance (KP) to address
the problem about how to determine
the validity and origin of information/knowledge on the web.
Chapurlat et al, work in progress, which aims at associating a systemic reference modelling approach with formal verification concepts in order to improve the user’s risk assessment toolbox to be used in manufacturing processes;
Nishioka, object model for planning and scheduling integration in system development on discrete manufacturing, dealing with frequent changes of the market being much more agile than the traditional models for production management;
Bézivin et al, some insights into transformations between some specific Domain-Specific Languages (DSL) particularly relevant to Business-to-Business (B2B) applications;
Bischoff & Graupner, 3-D laser scanning providing an optimum solution for quick, simple and realistic data acquisition for exact and consistent 3-D factory and equipment models using new developments of object recognition in unordered and incomplete laser scan point clouds;
Weisman, overview about the e-Government implementation process in the Canadian government;
Molina et al, the implementation of Business Process Management based on a Reference Framework based on Enterprise Integration Engineering concepts. The latter includes the following components: strategy definition (competitive, supply chain, operational), performance evaluation system, process design/re-design, and enabling technologies;
Ortiz et al, landscape of current problems in Enterprise Engineering and Integration, the strategies, solutions and vision about future trends;
Schmidt & Braun, development of an appropriate business model associated with B2B transactions, designed according to the newly introduced ebXML standards, thereby achieving a better definition of the economic value associated with a B2B transaction;
Jagannathan, reports on the different succeeded and failed approaches for enterprise integration used in the field of healthcare over the past decade, ending with the new approach just launched through the Health Level 7 standards organization with support from the Health and Human Services in the US;
Wattky & Neubert, process optimisation using both the supply chain operation reference (SCOR) model and the business process reengineering methodology (BPR);
Berger et al, two approaches aiming at overcoming interoperability barriers arising in communication process among humans and machines: an ontological approach, which focuses on computer supported human collaboration and human-machine interaction by means of natural languages, and an approach for machine data exchange and sharing, applying standards as highly extruded common knowledge (paper not presented).
IFAC World
Congress 2005 The 16th IFAC World Congress will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, from July 4 to July 8, 2005. The Congress will be a good opportunity for presenting new results and directions of Automatic Control theory, technology and applications. As such, it mainly will concentrate on the following key topics:
- Emphasis on invited lectures including plenaries, surveys and tutorials
- Industry participation promotion
- Attract young people to study and work in the field
The participants of the 16th IFAC World Congress will have the
opportunity to take part in the wide spectrum of categories for
technical presentations, including plenary lectures, survey papers,
regular papers of both lecture and poster session types, panel
discussions and case studies. Immediately preceding the formal opening
of the Congress, tutorials and workshops are being offered to give
participants an opportunity to learn new principles, methodologies,
technologies and applications that have been developed and/or are
developing in recent years.
During the IFAC World Congress, an Invited Session, is organized by the IFAC Technical Area 5.3 “Enterprise Integration and Networking” and sponsored by the INTEROP-NoE (Interoperability Research for Networked Enterprises Applications and Software, FP6-IST-508011, www.interop-noe.org), a Network of Excellence funded by the European Commission, that regroups more than 50 research organisations working in areas related to Enterprise interoperability.
INTEROP-ESA'2005
The First
International Conference on Interoperability of Enterprises Software
and
Applications, February 22-25, 2005,
Interoperability
in enterprise applications can be defined as the
ability of a system or a product to work with other systems or products
without
special effort from the customer or user. The possibility to interact
and
exchange information with internal and external collaborators is a key
issue in
the enterprise sector. It is fundamental in order to produce goods and
services
quickly, at lower cost, while maintaining higher levels of quality and
customisation. Interoperability is considered achieved if the
interaction can,
at least, take place at the three levels: data, applications and
business
enterprise through the architecture of the enterprise model and taking
into
account the semantics. It is not only a problem of software and IT
technologies. It implies support of communication and transactions
between
different organisations that must be based on shared business
references.
The
INTEROP-ESA conference aims at bringing together researches, users
and practitioners dealing with different issues of Interoperability of
Enterprise Applications and Software. The conference will focus on
interoperability
related research areas ranging like Enterprise Modeling to
define
interoperability requirements, Architecture and Platforms to
provide
implementation frameworks and Ontologies to define
interoperability
semantics in the enterprise.
The
INTEROP-ESA'2005
conference also encourages the submission of invited sessions with sets
of six
invited papers on well-defined subjects of current interest belonging
to the
scope of the conference.
An invited
session will be
accepted only if the session and its 6 papers are accepted. Accepted
papers of
a non-accepted invited session will be transferred into regular sessions
Conference Topics:
- Papers are invited in the areas
of interoperability, presenting original
work and not previously published from academics and professionals.
Topics for
the conference include, but are not limited to:
- Enterprise and networked
enterprises Modeling Methods,
Tools and frameworks
- Methods, Models and Tools for
intra and
inter-organizations interoperability
- Interoperable Inter-enterprise
Workflow Systems
- Knowledge Management, Metadata
and ontologies for interoperability
solutions
- Requirements Engineering for
Interoperable Enterprise
ontologies
- Design principles and patterns
for interoperability
- Good practices and solutions
for interoperability
development
- Standards for enterprise
integration and
interoperability
- Theory and practice of modeling
languages
- Management of Distributed
Enterprise Models
- Synchronisation and
Interoperability of Distributed
Enterprise Models
- Support of Co-operative Work
- Enterprise Applications
Analysis and semantic
elicitation
- Architectures and platforms for
interoperability
- Ubiquity, Mobility, Open
Architectures and large scale
interoperability
- Model Driven Architectures
- Experiments and case studies of
systems’
interoperability
- Interoperability of autonomous
systems
- Service oriented Architectures
- Interoperability of Digital Rights Management Systems