COA related projects

Describes R&D projects with participation of members of the former CIMOSA Association


gruen I-ESA 2020 gruen

The I-ESA 2020 Conference with the subtitle Interoperability in the era of Artificial Intelligence has been held online on November 17th - 20th, 2020 at the Ecole Nationale d'Ingenieurs de Tarbes (ENIT), 65000 Tarbes, France. For more details, see https://iesa2020.enit.fr/

The I-ESA 2020 Conference with the subtitle Interoperability in the era of Artificial Intelligence is addressing efficient collaborations of enterprises requiring management of interoperability in a dynamic, evolving production network. An efficient collaboration of organizations requires continuous adaptation to remain in line with potentially changing objectives, evolving resources and unexpected events.

Further, the topics of I-ESA 2020 are aligned with the vision of the European Framework Program Horizon 2020, regarding Enterprise Interoperability and Innovation, Interoperability strategies for Digital and Sensing Enterprise, System Interoperability in Internet of Everything, Collaborative Manufacturing and Logistics.

I-ESA 2020 has organized 9 Workshops held in close conjunction with the main conference. The particular goal is to facilitate an active exchange between the speakers and the audience in order to encourage further research and to publish the discussion outcomes in the proceedings. Workshops also address past or present International, European and national research projects in order to promote the exploitation of the project results.

The I-ESA 2020 Workshop Proceedings of the 9 workshops have been published online and are freely accessible at http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2900/  . The publisher CEUR-WS  is a free, open access publication channel for workshops and conferences from the computer science and information systems domain.

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 I-ESA 2018

 

Smart Services and Business Impact of Enterprise Interoperability

 

Fraunhofer IPK,  Berlin: Conference March 22-23, Workshops March 20-21, Doctoral Symposium March 19, 2018:

 http://iesa2018.ipk.fraunhofer.de/4941/

 

Organised by: Fraunhofer IPK / DFI and INTEROP-VLab

 

Goal and scope

The I-ESA series of conferences brings together the world's leading researchers and practitioners of enterprise interoperability and related domains, including interoperability aspects of enterprise systems and application. The conference will connect new business models, smart services, IoT and Cloud technologies. All these current and future technologies cannot work smoothly without interoperability. I-ESA is an outstanding opportunity to exchange experiences and business ideas between researchers, service providers, entrepreneurs and industrial stakeholders. I-ESA’18 is a forum where industry and research worlds meet and share experience, ideas and challenges on all aspects of enterprise systems interoperability and builds upon the seven previous conferences

 

I-ESA 2018 Workshop Proceedings:

In todays business world, markets, technologies and ICT stakeholders constantly improve and develop, making it challenging for single organizations to keep up with the competition and to implement the upcoming Digital Transformation. Organizational interoperation will become one key for cooperating enterprises.

The book of the workshop proceedings contains the short papers from 10 workshops organized in the frame of the International Conference on Enterprise Interoperability (I-ESA 2018) held on 2018-03-19/23 at the Fraunhofer IPK Institute in Berlin, together with the proceedings of a Doctoral Symposium.

Most of the presented workshop papers are originating from European or national research projects. One major goal of the workshop is the exchange of knowledge to encourage new findings, an active discussion of issues and the debate of results held between the presenters and the audience . Below you find a summary of selected topics from the I-ESA workshops. The workshop titles can also be found via the weblink below.

1) workshop on  Modelling & Simulation to design Advanced Manufacturing System : the workshop focused on PSS developments in academic and industrial domains, particularly with examples from European research projects  and discussed  methods and tools to support the development of Product Service System (PSS).

2) workshop on Interoperable ICT solutions in dynamic business environments: four major issues have been discussed: (i) howto empower people? (ii) how to enable effective knowledge sharing across multiple users with different work viewpoints? (iii) which analytic methods and techniques are needed? (iv) how to deploy and maintain Interoperable ICT applications

3) workshop on enterprise interoperability methods applied to vertical or horizontal organizational integration: key impact factors are seamless cooperation between enterprise strategy, tactic and operation, flexible Value Networks and  implementation of new IT technologies such as Cyber Physical systems and Internet of Things as well as use of IT service provision and Cloud technologies

5) a combined B1/B2 workshop on Big Data: discussed challenges for Smart Manufacturing and research definition efforts of the Big Data Value Association (BDVA). The efforts include data integration and data analysis challenges of Big Data. Another global challenge is the development of suitable reference ontologies to enable semantic information interoperability demonstrated wit examples from the domains logistics and construction industry.

6) standardisation workshop: discussions on why Interoperability should be driven by Agile Integration using Message Standards concepts resulted inconsideration of the respective needs for standards in development, deployment and configuration of smart services and applications. Using an example of message standards in the manufacturing sector, capability profiles in standards for life-cycle management were addressed  Subsequently, the questions of broad dissemination and use of such message standards was discussed

7) workshop on Virtual Factory Operating System: discussion on an Open Environment for Development of Manufacturing Applications in a novel environment resulted in proposal of an advanced editor for software developers. The proposed editor will provide a set of artifacts and libraries including standard connectors and extension points, debuggers, and tools to optimize the performance of applications. The approach is built on micro-services, and will be orchestrated through common REST (REpresentational State Transfer) web services with special attention on running resources OnPremise versus purely InCloud.

8) Two workshops on  requirements of Predictive Maintenance in the frame of Industry 4.0:  considered methodologies, tools and Interoperable applications, as well as aspects of people qualification and education.

9) workshop on Interoperability for Crisis Management in Smart Cities: proposed new methods to cope with crisis management in order  to increase the resilience of the operation in Smart Cities.

10) Doctoral Symposium: a change in the production process also requires a change in information systems. The proposed a flexible solution concept built on business processes that describe the value adding of an enterprise as well as configuration of the information system in order to obtain the needed information. Two illustrative use cases were presented.

For more information see the I-ESA 2018 Proceedings with the table of contents and the titles of all papers at  http://www.iste.co.uk/book.php?id=1411

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 I-ESA 2016

Pre-conference March 29th - 30th 2016 with workshops

Conference March 31st- April 1st 2016

GUIMARÃES (PORTUGAL)

Organised by Universidade do Minho / INTEROP VLab

 Enterprise Interoperability in the digitized and networked Factory of the Future“

 

The I-ESA series of conferences has become a forum where industry and research worlds meet and share experience, ideas and problems on all aspects of enterprise systems interoperability and associated topics. Furthermore, the topics of I-ESA 2016 are aligned with the vision presented in the framework program Horizon 2020 regarding interoperability: Enterprise interoperability and Innovation, Interoperability strategies for Digital and Sensing Enterprise, System Interoperability in Internet of everything; Collaborative manufacturing and logistics.

A detailed description is available at  http://www.i-esa.org/ .

 

I-ESA 2016 Workshops Summary: The papers presented at the 11 workshops were mostly originating from European or national ICT research projects. They address topics of advanced Enterprise Interoperability in research and applications in domains like Next Generation Enterprise Modeling, Product Service Systems, Big Data, Interoperability of Cloud collaborative networks as well as realisations in pilot implementations and standardisation management.

 

The Conference Proceedings will be published by SPRINGER.  The Workshop Proceedings will be published by ISTE-WILEY .

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I-ESA 2014

The I-ESA 2014 Conference, the 7th International Conference on Interoperablity and Applications, organised by Ecole de Mines Albi-Carmaux and INTEROP-VLab has taken place at Albi (France) on March 26-28, 2014, with Workshops and a Doctoral Symposium held on March 24-25, 2014.

Enterprises and organizations in today's economic environment are strongly dependent on their ability to interoperate in collaborations. The concept of interoperability has been defined by INTEROP-VLab as the ‘Ability of an enterprise system or application to interact with others’ at a low cost in a flexible approach. Consequently, interoperability of organisations appears as a major issue to succeed in building on the fly emerging enterprise networks. The conference is addressing in particular Interoperability for Agility, Resilience and Plasticity of collaborations.

I-ESA 2014 defines the concept of Enterprise Agility for interoperability with three objectives, namely to:

 

At I-ESA 2014, a total of 47 papers including key notes have been presented and published in the conference proceedings by SPRINGER, ISBN 978-3-319-04947-2

 

Preceded by the conference, seven workshops have been held. The workshop proceedings will be published by ISTE-WILEY in July 2014. Two workshops have addressed standardisation with the workshop titles,  Standardisation Developments for Enterprise Interoperability and the Manufacturing Service Domain and  Corporate Standardisation Management. The presentation slides from both workshops are available at interop-vlab.eu .

Read more at http://www.2014.i-esa.org

I-ESA 2012
 

The International Conference I-ESA’12 , Interoperability for Enterprise Systems and Applications, "Shaping Enterprise Interoperability in Future Internet"  will take place at Valencia/Spain on March 22-23, 2012,  preceded by a Pre-Conference with Workshops and a Doctoral Symposium, on March 20-21, 2012  .

Scope: Today, companies maximise flexibility and speed of response to changing market conditions, by focusing on core innovation and information centred activities, outsourcing labour intensive activities to less advanced economies. They develop knowledge and links with other companies with which they can collaborate to provide the products and services that the market demands – the networked enterprise, or virtual organisation.


I-ESA 2010

The International Conference I-ESA 2010 Interoperabilkity for Enterprise Software and Applications - Making the Internet of the Future the Furure of the Entreprise was held at Coventry, UK on April 13/15, 2010. The conference with 43 papers and 165 participants was addressing in seven parts the topics: Business Interoperability, Enterprise Modelling for Enterprise Interoperability, Semantics for Enterprise Interoperability, Architectures and Frameworks for Interoperability, Platforms for Enterprise Interoperability, Interoperability Scenarios and Case Studies, Standards for Interoperability. The conference proceedings have been published by Springer, ISBN 978-1-184996-256-8 . Find a Summary of the conference and the papers.

Scope: Today, enterprises/organisations maximise flexibility and speed of response to changing external conditions. They develop knowledge and links with other Enterprises/Organisation with which they can collaborate to provide the products and services that the users demands.  The issue of interoperability within the enterprise/organisations is therefore no longer limited to the interoperability between silos of systems within single companies, but has become one of interoperability throughout a network of enterprise/organisation.
It is now recognised that interoperability of systems and thus sharing of information is not sufficient to ensure common understanding between enterprises. Knowledge of information meaning and understanding of how is to be used must also be shared if decision makers distributed between those enterprises in the network want to act consistently and efficiently. Enterprise interoperability must therefore now embrace sharing of collaboration knowledge and core competencies as well as the administration of such shared knowledge knowledge oriented collaboration. Find related information at http://interop-vlab.eu

As a Pre-Conference day, I-ESA 2010 has featured a programme consisting of workshops and tutorials. A workshop titled  “Standards – a foundation for Interoperability” (link to workshop report) organised by the I-VLab Standardisation Group was held on 2010-04-13. The Conference offered several exhibits and a brokerage event, including a hands-on "industrial use case challenge".

DFI Industry Workshop

The DFI (Deutsches Forum fuer Interoperabilitaet  the German INTEROP-VLab Pole, www.dfi-ev.de) has invited researchers and practitioners interested in interoperability to a workshop held in cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences Konstanz, on April 2, 2009. The workshop titled Produktivität im Vertriebsprozess durch Interoperabilitaet - Interoperability for productivity in the marketing process has taken place at Konstanz, Germany. The workshop was attended by 78 participants from research and from industry and was rated very successful in building a bridge between these two areas as well as providing a common vision of interoperation developments.  You find a  workshop report here.

I-ESA China 2009

The International Conference I-ESA China 2009 Interoperabilkity for Enterprise Software and Applications - Promoting collaboration of enterprises through interoperability, to link China and  Europe and the world - was held in Bejing, China on 2009-04-21/23 with 130 participants, among them officers from DG INFSO of the European Commission and from MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology of China), conference website http://www.i-esa.org.cn

Objectives and scope of the conference:
Enterprise Interoperability is the ability of an Enterprise or more generally one Organisation to work with other Enterprises or Organisations without special effort. The capability to interact and exchange information both internally and with external organisations- partners, suppliers, customers, citizens -  is a key issue in the economic and public sector. Today, Enterprises/Organisations maximise flexibility and speed of response to changing external conditions. They develop knowledge and links with other Enterprises/Organisation with which they can collaborate to provide the products and services that the users demands.  Enterprise interoperability must therefore now embrace sharing of collaboration knowledge and core competencies as well as the administration of such shared knowledge -knowledge oriented collaboration.

INTEROP-VLab

INTEROP-VLab has grown to eight poles, with the Italian Pole and the North Pole (Finland, Norway and Sweden) as new partners, enlarging the VLab to an organisation with more than 300 interoperability researchers in 70 organisations. At the 2nd General Assembly held on 2008-05-15 in Brussels, the following major achievements were presented:
- VLab is recognised as the Single Entry point of State of the Art for Enterprise Interoperability. All public deliverables developed in the FP6 and FP7 projects related to Enterprise Interoperabil-ity provided by the European commission are accessible via the INTEROP-VLab platform ,
- the Research Agenda of the INTEROP-VLab scientific group has been introduced into the EI roadmap of the European Commission,
- the INTEROP-VLab services including the knowledge map as the dynamic interoperability Asset of INTEROP-VLab to facilitate finding of world wide Interoperability Experts, Interopera-bility approaches and artefacts as well as all re-lated documents in an integrated environment.
More details about ongoing activities, also reported in the regular Newsletters can be found on the VLab portal (http://www.interop-vlab.eu).

The I-ESA 2008 Conference : The 4th International Conference on Interoperability for Enterprise Software and Applications was held at Fraunhofer IPK in Berlin, Germany, on 2008-03-25/28. Organised in 3 parallel sessions and with 8 workshops, the I-ESA'2008 conference brought together 180 experts in Enterprise Interoperability and e-Business research with industry users, presenting to the audience the forefront of interoperability research as well as industry positions and viewpoints in this domain. Interoperability in this context of enterprise applications is the ability of a system or a product to interact and exchange information both internally and with external organisations (partners, suppliers, customers) is a key issue in the entire economy.

I-ESA´2008 was jointly organized by the INTEROP VLab (http://www.interop-vlab.eu) and the EIC (Enterprise Interoperability Centre) the follow-on of the ATHENA project (http://www.eic-community.org).

A summary of all presented papers, grouped according to the main subjects is available at,  I-ESA'2008 Conference papers .

INTEROP-VLab has the goal to develop a large scale networked research community in Europe and beyond. It has been established in March 2007 as follow-on organisation of the INTEROP-NoE project (Network of Excellence). The VLab will co-ordinate, develop and promote research on Enterprise Interoperability (EI) through a number of newly established regional partner organisations called Poles. So far Poles in France, Germany, UK and China have been established, four more in preparation. The German Pole, DIF (Deutsches Forum fuer Interoperabilitaet) is located at the Fraunhofer IPK in Berlin. The CIMOSA Association is a partner of the Deutsches Forum fuer Interoperabilitaet .

More details about VLab are provided in a summary of the first INTEROP-VLab Newsletter or can be found at the portal http://interop-vlab.eu.
 
 

INTEROP-NoE Results and Dissemination

Besides the scientific results at the end of the project, described in the deliverables (http://interop-vlab.eu.) and the network building, INTEROP has created early pilot products from its research activities:

With the project emphasis on network building, dissemination of the project results has been an activity of major importance. The following list provides an overview of the different activities that have been carried out:amonmg it the I-ESA International INTEROP Conferences, held in Geneva 2005, Bordeaux 2006 and Funchal 2007 with a total of 800 participating researchers from academia and industry.


63 national articles on dissemination

The results of the project activities have reached an estmated 2500 researchers worldwide

The I-ESA 2007 Conference

More than 400 people attended the I-ESA'07 Conference on March 26-30, 2007 at Funchal, Portugal, with 32 sessions, 12 workshops, 12 tutorials, 16 courses of the School in Interoperability and the PhD symposium, among them the world’s leading researchers and practitioners in the area of Enterprise Interoperability and e-Business. The I-ESA has been successfully proven as a unique forum to present and discuss research results and industrial experiences of interoperability research for business, enterprise applications and software.You will find here a Press Release about the Conference with further details and the I-ESA'07 announcement  with the conference scope, topics, co-sponsors and committees.

Further, there is a condensed version of all papers of the I-ESA'07 proceedings available.

WHAT: I-ESA 2007 is one in a series of advanced conferences about Interoperability for Enterprise Software and Applications. Interoperability is a new discipline of complex business relationships. We define it as the ability of a system or a product to work with other systems in order to produce goods and services quickly and at lower cost. 

WHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE: Both academic personnel from applied interoperability research as well as experts and development managers from industry working in Enterprise Software Applications (ERP, CRM, Decisional….), system integrators, business and IT consultancies. You are invited to contribute presenting your results and viewpoint in a forum for exchange of solutions and new requirements. 

The conference is focussing on the topics under the aspect of interoperability: Business and Organisational Models, Collaboration, Co-design, , Heterogeneous Enterprise Networks, Product Data Management, Ontologies based methods, Services, Architectures and Platforms as well as Standardisation and Security. Besides a pre-conference workshops and symposia, I-ESA’07 will include an exhibition programme and an additional brokerage event, including hands-on "industrial use case challenges". 

BACKGROUND: Initiated in 2003 by two major European research projects of the 6th Framework R&D Programme of the European Commission, the ATHENA Integrated Projectand the INTEROP Network of Excellence, both with participating world class European enterprises, research organisations and universities but also specialists round the world (USA, Japan, China, ….).The previous I-ESA conferences in 2005 and 2006 have been recognized to lead and generate an extensive research and industrial impact and were attended by more than 300 participants. 

LOCATION: Funchal,Madeira Island, Portugal, March 27-30, 2007. For more information, please see the Call for Proposal (CfP), and the overview on the I-ESA'07  at http://www.i-esa.org/i-esa2007

 


INTEROP-ESA 2006 Conference Report

The I-ESA 2006 conference has been held in Bordeaux, 2006-03-22/24. The conference was organised by two of the European interoperability cluster projects – INTEROP and ATHENA and held jointly with the eGovernment conference of the eGov project and attended by 240 particpants. A total of 76 papers together with 6 keynote papers have been presented during the I-ESA conference in plenary and parallel sessions, the latter including well-organised poster sessions.

Starting with a view on the changing context of enterprise interoperability research by G. Santucci, Head of the Unit ‘ICT for Enterprise Networking’ at the DG ‘Information Society and Media’ of the European Commission, the keynote sessions continued with 4 papers presenting the view of industrial users (Verizon, Siemens) and software providers (Microsoft, SAP). Two papers presented by INTEROP and ATHENA on their efforts on community building - Virtual Lab and Enterprise Interoperability Centre, respectively - completed the keynote sessions.

The emphasis of the research papers was on the main areas of the INTEROP and ATHENA projects: Enterprise Modelling, Ontologies and Platforms. Papers on standardisation and trust completed the research on interoperability efforts. A short summary of all papers is provided in the linked  I-ESA 2006 Report, which follows the same sequence as above, but introducing a few sub-headings to structure the papers according to their main content. The conference proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag. Via the following links, more details of the I-ESA 2006 Conference programme and of the preceeding workshops are provided .

INTEROP Project Organisation

The main results of INTEROP - with its focus on the interoperability and synergy between the domains of Enterprise Modelling, Ontology and Architecture & Platform - can be summarised in three clusters of project work packages:

1.) Integrating activities (WP1 to WP4): Selection and installation of a collaboration platform (www.interop-noe.org); Design of a Knowledge Map with a query function for interoperability research, a classification framework (taxonomy) and a prototype for data collection (Protégé); Definition of a model for the definition of the Virtual Laboratory to persist after the termination of the project.

2.) Joint research activities (WP5 to WP9): Analysis of how to classify, organise and map existing enterprise modelling languages, taking into account semantic requirements; Definition of a framework and a methodology for the management and the synchronisation of distributed enterprise models; Collection of interoperability good practices and solutions as well as a proposition of design principles and patterns for interoperability; Production of state of the art documents on “Ontology-based integration of enterprise modelling and architectures & platforms” and on “Model driven and dynamic, federated enterprise architectures and interoperability”.

3.) Dissemination and spreading of excellence activities (WP10 to WP12): Initial elaboration of a glossary of interoperability terms; Definition of a list of Web courses and tutorials to be developed; Initial rules for the creation of an Interoperability Master Program; Co-ordinated organisation of and participation in a large number of events like international conferences and workshops, the most significant of them being the First International Conference on Interoperability for Enterprise Applications and Software (I-ESA), Geneva, February 2005. Most of the results are available as public deliverables

INTEROP-ESA'2005 Conference Report 

INTEROP-ESA’05, 1st International Conference on Interoperability of Enterprise Software and Applications, Geneva, Switzerland, 2005-02-23/25, 56 papers have been presented in 12 general sessions and 6 special industry sessions and on R&D in the IST programme. Conference attendance was about 150 people. 

The conference was preceded by a two-day doctoral symposium presenting and discussing 23 interoperability related papers, 2 tutorials on tools for B2B transaction analysis and web services and 4 workshops addressing enterprise integration, interoperability and networking, related standards, web services and interoperability and industry needs and  requirements, respectively.

Three plenary session addressed various aspects of interoperability with the four keynote speakers addressing the need for future developments with an emphasis on applications in areas like health, transport, energy, materials entertainment, education etc.; eGovernment interoperability for regional governments; the OMG Model Driven Architecture; and the view of the European Commission on interoperability. Three invited papers presented contributions from the ATHENA project (IST 50 78 49), from the CEN/ISSS eBusiness Interoperability Forum and fro Microsoft. Focus of the ATHENA presentation was on CommunityBuilding and the Enterprise Interoperability Centre (EIC). The latter is foreseen as follow-on for the ATHENA project and shall be established, as an independent, permanent organisation to outreach to individual industry sectors for disseminating, catalysing and mobilising the development and use of interoperable solutions that meet business needs. Microsoft presented their view on Service-Oriented Architecture and how they could be employed in realising trusted, interoperable, pan-European e-government services.

The papers presented in the general session addressed a wide range of subjects relevant for enterprise software and application interoperability including frameworks, architectures, metamodels, ontologies, infrastructures and tools.

An overview of relevant research projects was presented in the two sessions on R&D in the European IST program. Seven projects present themselves and their contributions to interoperability. The areas addressed: Semantic Web, cross-organisational collaboration, standardisation, research in interoperability, enterprise systems and integration and eGovernment.

Industrial applications have been presented in four consecutive special sessions of the Industrial Track addressing topics of interoperability in the domains of architecture, frameworks and infrastructures. Objective of the Industrial Track was 1) to bring together researchers, users and practitioners working on various issues of interoperability to share their knowledge and experiences, 2) to reach an improved common understanding, across industry and research, on interoperability and 3) to identify requirements for further research. 

For abstracts of all papers see esa

-papers

.

For more information: http://interop-esa05.unige.ch/; The Conference Proceedings have been published by Springer.

Dissemination Activities

An INTEROP Dissemination workshop held on 2005-09-20 at the EDOC Conference, concerned with the convergence of the paradigms, technologies and methods involved in enterprise computing. At the workshop, attended by researchers and practitioners, different views on interoperability were presented. The discussion focussed on the major challenges to fill  the gap between interoperability needs of the business and IT support. This gap is even increasing by the divergence of interests in industry and in academia (Fehler! Hyperlink-Referenz ungültig.).

Open Forum Geneva: An Open Forum has been held at  Geneva University , Switzerland, on 2004-07-12/16 as part of the INTEROP mobility programme. Three workshops addressed the major themes of the INTEROP initiative: architectures and platforms, ontologies and methods. With workshop attendance up to 20 participants people presented their relevant work, which was further discussed during the workshop. Exchange of information between participants will continue using both electronic means and by collaborations under the INTEROP mobility programme.

Workshop Mallorca: The INTEROP partners met in Mallorca (Spain) on May 22-25, 2004. The event gathered 100 researchers. Besides meetings of the WPs and inter-WP cluster sessions, a presentation of the  Collaborative Platform as well as tutorials on Enterprise Modelling, on Ontology and on Architecture & Platforms have been given. 
 

The Collaborative Platform as the focus of knowledge exchange offers

The platform supports joint research, exchange of specific knowledge produced by network members and provides knowledge dissemination to the public. You will  find there newsletters, presentations, reports from past and upcoming events as well as project items like the Knowledge Map, reports from group activities, discussions and performance indicators. The knowledge volume is continuously enlarged,  more functionalities will be added. The platform is using using ZOPE/PLONE, an Open Source Content Management System.


What is Interop 

The Joint Programme of Activities of  INTEROP and ATHENA in the 6FP aims to:

The INTEROP (IST-2003-508011) project kick-off  has taken place on  January 16, 2004 for a three year project duration.

Why is interoperability so important

Research in the interoperability domain in Europe remains badly structured, fragmented, sometimes overlapping. There is no global vision of the consistency and no co-ordination between various European research centres, university laboratories, or other bodies.

What needs to be done

The roadmap for interoperability research emphasises the need for integrating three key thematic components:

Work Plan

INTEROP will extract value from the sustainable integration of these thematic components and to develop industrially significant new knowledge. Network’s role will be to create the conditions of a technological breakthrough to avoid that enterprise investment be simply pulled by the incremental evolution of IT offer. The project work plan involves several workpackages for joint research, integration and dissemination and training activities. 

Who is involved

51 European partners from universities, research organisations and industrial enterprises with the University Bordeaux 1, France as co-ordinating partner. A core team with in addition to the co-ordinating partner , namely GRAISOFT , University Henri Poincaré Nancy (CRAN and LORIA), France; University Namur, Belgium; Fraunhofer-IPK, CIMOSA Association and DFKI University Kaiserslautern, Germany, CRF Fiat, Gruppo Formula CNR, TXT E-Solution, University Torino, Italy; Computas and SINTEF, Norway; UNINOVA, Portugal, Polytecnic University Valencia, Spain, CIMMEDIA, UK will take the lead in the project activities. The CIMOSA Association together with CRAN/University Nancy is reponsible for dissemination and communication. 

Close co-operation with the integrated project ATHENA (IST 2003-507312) has been established.

How to participate

By participating in a Workpackage or joining one of the Open Workshops. 

Contact information

Prof. JP Bourrièrres, University Bordeaux 1, bourrieres@lap.u-bordeaux.fr

Internet: For INTEROP www.interop-noe.org and for ATHENA  www.athena-ip.org/

        

  

  

    


 

 


 
 

gruenUnified Enterprise Modelling Language (UEML)gruen

A variety of Enterprise Modelling Languages (EMLs) exist, aiming to describe processes and other enterprise aspects. Most EMLs are implemented in tools with proprietary terminology, modelling constructs and templates. Each modelling language employs a particular syntax, and limited, tool-embedded semantics and graphical notations. The tools support conflicting modelling paradigms. Hence the foundations of Enterprise Modelling, Engineering and Visual Management are fragmented and lack formal definitions. UEML intends to solve the problem of multiple Enterprise Modelling Languages.

Project

The main Objective of the UEML - Unified Enterprise Modelling Language project (IST – 2001 – 34229) is to provide industry with a unified and expandable modelling language. For this purpose, the project is setting up an UEML Working Group which aims at :

The UEML Working Group is composed of eight core members and will be open to industrial and academic members to form the UEML network of persons interested in the development of such a language. Eight partners form the UEML core group, namely GRAISOFT (associated to the LAP/GRAI-University Bordeaux 1 and LABRI-University Bordeaux 1) (F) as prime contractor, INRIA (associated with CRAN-University Henri Poincaré Nancy 1) (F), COMPUTAS AS (N), CIMOSA Association (D), IPK/FhG Berlin (D), University of Torino (I), University of Namur (B), Polyechnic University of Valencia (E).

The long term objective of UEML is the defimition of a Unified Enterprise Modelling Language, which will

Methodology

The UEML network is created via Membership and Dissemination Workshops with invited experts coming from IT-Users, Consulting Companies, IT-Vendors, Research Organisations, Universities, Standardisation Bodies and Associations.
 

 

Note: The 2nd Business Process Management (BPM) Congress in Munich was one of a series of conferences organised by NewMediaSales, Germany (www.NewMediaSales.com)

Results (at the end of the project, May 30, 2003):

The project has been completed and its deliverables have been accepted by the European Commission. The following major results have been achieved:

WP1 "State of the art" investigated Enterprise Modelling Languages (EMLs), Enterprise Engineering Tools (EETs) and EM Software Environments (EMSE) as well as several approaches relative to meta-modelling and structured the results in a framework for EM approaches. These results have been used as guidelines to support the design of the language constructs. Project discussions focussed on selecting approaches that can be reused for the definition of UEML and on the needs for future EMLs.

WP2 "Needs and requirements" collected these directly from the UEML consortium, via enterprise visits, the UEML portal and most important – via four membership meetings with 36 members. To define the requirements coming from different perspectives and level of detail four description elements where defined: 1) Hierarchical structure, 2) Requirements description, 3) Attribute table to define the relevance according to a set of criteria, 4) Problem and solution orientation of the requirement. The above elements where used for ranking and analysing the requirements in order to identify the most important requirements for the different issues.

WP3 "Definition of UEML" elaborated the ‘UEML Strategy’ to integrate existing modelling languages into a ‘unified language’ and define the correspondences for importing and exporting ‘native’ business models. Further, the UEML 1.0 has been developed, which represents the successful implementation of the ‘UEML Strategy’ providing a meta-model in UML of a ‘unified language’ and the correspondences between the three selected modelling languages IEM, EEML, GRAI integrated into the UEML meta-model. This methodology can be applied to other languages in order to extend the UEML 1.0 and at the same time support to the exchange of models with other languages. This strategy has been generalised addressing specific work topics.

WP4 "UEML Demonstrator Portal" built by Computas has served as a platform for generic services, to publish and communicate UEML constructs and to provide three demonstrators using UEML based on the enterprise modelling tools of consortium members: Moogo, eMagim and Metis (www.ueml.org). In addition, emphasis has been placed on providing project results to the public and collecting feedback. To support these efforts Computas has released Metis 3.3, an open modelling environment (www.computas.com/).

WP5 "Dissemination, evaluation and market prospects" established the UEML network which has now over 90 European experts and will remain as a long term supporting community. Membership and dissemination meetings, working groups, progress reports and the use of the UEML Portal have lead to an extensive information exchange between the network and the project core group, with 27 presentations and publications and a project flyer in five different languages. Further, an UEML tutorial CD has been produced as a teaching and training vehicle for students and interested users. Also a tool/market study categorising EM tools versus their compliance with the collected requirements has been made.

With regard to Standardisation, three categories of standards have been identified, which relate to the requirements for enterprise reference architectures as specified in ISO 15704: 1) frameworks – CEN/ISO 19439, 2) languages - high level enterprise description aimed on ICT aspects (ISO-IEC 15414), e-business (BPMI/BPML), user oriented business process description (CEN/ISO 19440, OMG/RfP) and formal specifications (ISO 18629) and 3) modules, ranging from ICT integration support and representation and exchange of industrial manufacturing management data to support of software interoperability and integration of control systems.

Summary: The UEML 1.0 core language is limited to the scenario based exchange capability between the three modelling tools available in the consortium and therefore considered a feasibility effort. Yet, the UEML development strategy has the potential to provide significant contributions enabling basic interoperability on the business process model level and to become a generic methodology for shared enterprise modelling and model exchange leading to a potential industry standard.

Further work: UEML 2.0 will be developed within the INTEROP-NoE project (IST-2003-508011) launched in January 2004. Workpackage 5  titled 'Common Enterprise Modelling Framework'  has started work focussing on the development of UEML in the environment of distributed enterprises and with the goal to integrate other research work and to demonstrate the benefits of Interoperability.

More information can be found on the Web-Portal: http://www.UEML.org . Or contact the Project Manager Professor Guy Doumeingts,  GRAISOFT, Bordeaux, (gdoumeingts@graisoft.com).


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 
 

gruenEnterprise Inter-and Intra Organisational Integration - International Consensus  (EI3-IC)gruen

Project

The third international initiative had again the objective to increase both international consensus (IC) and public awareness on enterprise integration. Following the two previous initiatives in 1992 and 1997 , the focus of the third initiative was on Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organisational Integration (EI3).

The initiative is supported by the European Commission, DG Information Society, IST 2001-92039 and the International Federation of Information Processing - IFIP TC5/WG 5.12. , with a project duration from 08/2001 until 10/2002 . The organisation has been done jointly by

The EI3-IC initiative has provided a basis for an international discourse on the subject of enterprise inter- and intra-organisational co-operation with emphasis on virtual enterprises (VE) and Business-to-Business (B2B) type e-commerce. Inviting experts in the field has enabled pulling in insights and results from other projects hence enabling a consolidation of this fragmented know-how, and thereby contributing to an international consensus in the field. The community building during the EI3-IC initiative will continue as an international forum to further identify and eliminate barriers to utilisation of inter- and intra-organisational integration technology.

Methodology

The initiative on enterprise inter- and intra-organisational integration (EI3-IC) consists of two parts:

A scientific committee has guided and supported the initiative. It has acted as advisory committee for reviewing workshop and conference agendas and papers and helped to identify the experts to be invited to the workshops.

The workshops have been organised with plenary sessions for all participants and a number of parallel working group sessions. The first plenary session held in all workshops provided time for the participants to present their own work as it relates to the predefined set of issues. This methodology has led again to very good results. It enables the members of the working group to have a common understanding of each other’s position leading too much better focusing on the issues to be discussed.

Results

Four thematic workshops with international experts in the field have been organised. The workshop themes have been selected according to their im-portance for the management of business collaborations. The following workshops have been held:

The ICEIMT’02 was held at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, on 2002-04 24/26. It was structured following the themes of the workshops. In addition to an opening session with keynote papers, a special session on international projects provided information on actual work done on an international level.

The EI3-IC Initiative has ended on 2002-11-30 . The Conference Proceedings and the results of the Initiative have been published under the title 'Enterprise Inter- amnd Intra-Organisational Integration - Building International Consensus' , Eds. K. Kosanke et al , Kluver Academic Publishers , ISBN 1-4020-7277-5 (2002) .

More details can be found in this Web Site at http://www.cimosa.de/EI3-IC/index1.html


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

gruenBusiness Architect Projectgruen

The Project

The Business Architect Project (BAP), which was launched in the IST Programme in February 2000 and is scheduled to run through July 2002, has  completed its initial research and development phase. The project is now ready to invite outside organizations to apply to join those within the BAP consortium as they begin testing and validating the Business Architect services and tools the project has developed from research programmers at three cutting-edge European management schools.

Goals and methodology

To implement and test management services and supporting software tools which will facilitate the optimal design, efficient and effective operation and ultimate success of virtual enterprises, enabling them to realize the value of business innovation in a new entrepreneurial way of working and managing in the information society, which we refer to as the Business Architect approach.

As used here, new business development proposes that all these functions should be treated as complementary tasks within effective innovation processes. In order to best accommodate the processes, we observe the rapid advent of new organizational units for new business development, which are demonstrating increasing demand for the professional services of a Business Architect. Such virtual venture environments have emerged in various forms, for example from within large corporations, in co-operation with other firms in a region, or from a financial point of view as venture portfolios. In all cases, networks of firms play an important role and an intention is expressed to give maximum support to new ventures.

Benefits and exploitation

Project Co-ordinator Virtual Enterprise Architects (VEA) of Leiden, the Netherlands, has combined the expertise of the Center for Technology & Innovation Management (CeTIM) in Munich, the Rotterdam School of Management and Barcelona’s ESADE to create the portfolio of Business Architect services, with supporting software tools developed by InMediasP in Berlin.The Business Architect Project has collected knowledge on the management of what we call virtual venture environments from more than 50 in-depth interviews with key executives in more than 30 firms from 6 European Countries. How best to configure the new venture’s management team? What has to be done to best nurture new ventures? How is value created within such new ventures? The solutions to such questions are provided in the form of three Business Architect Services:

The choice and delivery of the service components and their supporting tools will be customized according to both the internal characteristics and the external environment of the virtual enterprise. Associated strategic management consultancy will also be a key Business Architect service component, but as it is more case-specific, flexible and variable it will be provided in a tailor-made form according to the profile of each particular case. Two intensive case studies will provide the foundation for the validation of the Business Architect Services. One is Intracom’s strategic alliance to develop new business in the telecom industry. The second is technology marketing at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), which has created more than thirty spin-off firms in the past two years.

Interested organizations are cordially invited to contact VEA for more information and to discuss the possibility of their organization testing the Business Architect services themselves.

Tim Oake, Project Co-ordinator & Bernhard Katzy (+), Technical Director

Business Architect Project Office, Virtual Enterprise Architects BV, tel: +31 71 566 3087,
e-mail: bap@vearchitects.com , project website: http://www.business-architect.de


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 
 
 

 

 

{short description of image}ONE{short description of image}

Project

ONE (Optimisation of Networked Enterprise) is a project running since 03/2001 under the GROWTH programme and  concerns multi-site production infrastructures under the aspect of  the knowledge based extended enterprise in the combination of real-time empirical modelling and optimisation

Objectives and innovation 

The principal innovation is the founding of real supply chains managed by industrial partners. 

Consortium 

The Consortium comprises two major automotive industries and a small textile company. Four academic partners will work on the most scientific issues of a project that is multidisciplinary (supply chain simulation, optimisation, statistical data management) and innovative. One IT supplier will cover the design and the implementation and will lead the exploitation stage. 

Co-ordinator: CRF - Fiat Research Centre (IT) 

Partners : Renault FR: Popilia (IT), Warwick University (GB), Intrasoft (GR), CNRS (F), BIBA (D); INRIA (F) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

{short description of image}V-Chain{short description of image}

Project

The project V-Chain (Virtual Chain) has started 03/2001 under the GROWTH programme, Key action  "Innovative Products, Processes and Organisation" . It is concerned with the supply chain in highly dynamic markets, which generates problems leading to oversized stocks, lack of accomplishmed deliveries, major inefficiencies in order to accomplish due dates, etc. Both local i.e. enterprise limited and global i.e. supply chain wide results are significantly improved through more harmonious and equitable peer-to-peer inter-enterprise relationships, conforming a federated enterprise model. 

Objectives and innovation

The main innovation provided by federated models is that, for aspects affecting the global supply chain, all partners are involved on one hand in the identification and definition of both the problems and their solutions, and on the other hand in joint business processes execution. 

Consortium

The consortium has been structured to provide the project with a three-axis perspective of the problem and its solutions, seeking the complementarity and transnationality of partners: 


Consulting and technological perspective: DMR Consulting Group (prime contractor, E)