eManufacturing / BizTalk Symposium

Following presentations of from the industry users and the BizTalk software distributor, aspects of eManufacturing were discussed in working groups. As the discussions revealed, main barriers for users are: Missing data semantic, confidence in the system reliability and IT security as well as common understanding of the processes and effective, open communication. Hence, users indicated most urgent needs in improved standards, application services, simulation opportunities, eLearning and education for the new organisation. 

The vendors point of view - presented by a market leader - emphasised the challenge of integration of applications, a trend towards distributed application services delivered via enterprise networks or the internet (web services), more standardisation via inter-application protocols. Clearly, vendors place their priorities on the large volume evolving market segments as office and mobile communication. 

One research project at the wbk Karlsruhe, presented at the symposium, investigates the business process model based simulation of supply chain networks in generic modular Petri nets. In the meta model, an activity is connected with the responsible organisation unit via the allocation of resources. The dynamic structure of the meta model- as instantiation parameters, routes, dependencies and sequencing rules - are captured as tables in a standardised relational database. This model development in an SQL database enables the parallel processing of several models or parts of it. The Petri net supports the time based, event driven simulation of distributed, dynamical supply chain networks. Contact: gisela.lanza@mach.uni-karlsruhe.de

General Information at http://www-wbk.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de. 
 
 
 

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