Minutes of the ICEIMT'02 Conference of the EI3-IC Initiative

(Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organisational Integration – International Consensus)

The initiative began in the early 90s when governments and users in Europe and the USA realised that there was a need for a better way to manage the flow of information within or among enterprises of all natures. It was therefore decided to hold a conference on Enterprise Modelling and Enterprise Integration technologies preceded by a series of 3-day workshops bringing together top experts from EU and US, as well as experts from other regions of the world. The aim was to compare scientific and technical advances in the field on both side of the Atlantic Ocean, to build an international consensus where common stand-points can be identified and to influence developments of tools and standards in the field.

The first ICEIMT was held in 1992 in Hilton Head Island, NC, USA and the second one was held in Torino, Italy in 1997. ICEIMT’02 in Valencia, Spain, was the third edition of this 5-year event. The conference has been preceded by four preparatory workshops (Paris, Dec. 2001; Singapore, Jan. 2002; Gaithersburg, USA, Feb. 2002; Berlin, Feb. 2002). 

The Conference was held at the University Polytechnic of Valencia in Spain, on 2002-04-24/26, with an attendance of over 70 people from academia and industry coming from all five continents - Africa (South Africa), America (Canada, USA), Asia (China and Japan), Australia, and Europe (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, UK).

The conference had only one stream of presentations and the agenda (see attachment) was organised ac-cording to the themes of the workshop arranged in the sequence of the workshops. Each of the four work-shop themes sessions - 

  • Knowledge management in inter- and intra-organization environments (WS 1)
  • Enterprise inter- and intra-organization engineering and integration (WS 2)
  • Interoperability of business processes and enterprise models (WS 3)
  • Common representation of enterprise models (WS 4)
started with an overview paper on the subject followed by the workgroup reports. Papers on selected topics provided additional information on the different subjects.

The opening sessions started with welcome addresses by the Valencia regional government and the University followed by presentations from the two main sponsors – the European Commission and NIST - and a key note paper on enterprise modelling. A special session at the end of the conference provided information on international projects. The closing session of the conference was changed and rather than presenting the paper on the history of the ICEIMT it was devoted to a discussion on the future of the initiative on international consensus. 

The planning for next steps identified discrete areas of need. These are listed below in no particular order. Discussants had diversity of opinion on priorities. Everyone agreed that the core focus of the community (enterprise integration) must be maintained. Also, voices expressed unanimous agreement that the inter-disciplinary nature of the work (in terms of approaches) be emphasized. Most participants seemed to agree that the "demand" side of the equation (attracting users) should not be a focus, rather emphasizing the "supply" side: consistently improving solutions and the supply of practitioners.

In supporting the "supply" side, all agreed that the future of the community should be taken into its own hands as an international concern; this is opposed to counting on forthcoming support from the EU as the driving factor. Independently, the immense influence of the web indicates that the EI community needs to be more active in relevant web developments.

Action list:
Establish an educational program to create a science of enterprise integration. Mark Fox, Toronto University took responsibility for hosting a working session in September to develop a plan for bringing this about. 
Create a publication venue: Mark Fox also offered to host the first EI conference in Toronto in 2004, which is seen as the earliest practical time. The rationale for the conference is primarily to provide a publication forum, feeding existing journals or perhaps creating a new one. 

  • Continue the workshop process: Many people spoke of the value of the ICEIMT workshops as the primary vehicle for sharing ideas, getting reality checks, and establishing consensus research directions. The preference was for more frequency, perhaps yearly. 
  • Support EI standards: The reasoning behind this suggestion was that the EI community depends on standards as a key strategy and focus for interaction. 
  • Form, propose and execute research projects: Obviously, there was much interest in proposing projects to the EU IST sixth framework program, which seems well disposed to the EI agenda. 
  • Support the vendor base: A vendor suggested a frequently-updated "handbook of enterprise integration." 
  • Outreach to parallel communities: As EI is highly interdisciplinary, the importance of outreach to other disciplines is essential. The web connection has been noted, and also the cogent academic disciplines. Of special interest is the human factors community.
  • Develop a clear business case: Only one voice articulated this concern, but he did so forcefully. How this can be supported as an individual activity is not known, so it probably will satisfied through practical user consciousness in the above listed actions.
Abstracts of the papers including the summary of the group reports - presented in the form of quadcharts - have been included in the conference brochure and have been distributed as part of the conference handouts. The abstracts are available at the NIST website and at the CIMOSA website. The conference proceedings will be published by Kluwer Academic Publishers and will become available in August of this year. The proceedings will also contain selected papers presented at the EI3-IC workshops.

In addition, several enterprise modelling tools have been demonstrated during the conference. All tool demonstrators had also the opportunity to present their tool before or after conference sessions in the plenary room to a large audience (see agenda).

The conference was preceded by meetings of ISO/TC 184 SC5 (WGs 1 and 4) and of the European IST Project UEML. 

Return to main page