CIMOSA - News
Editor: Martin Zelm, Gehenbuehlstr. 18A, D-70499 Stuttgart, martin.zelm@cimosa.de
The CIMOSA - News is published by the CIMOSA Association.
The CIMOSA News will report on CIMOSA applications, evolution of its technical
specification, advancements in standardisation and related items. Contributions
from other parties are welcome. The CIMOSA - News will be printed periodically
and is also available in the internet at http://www.cimosa.de.
UEML (Unified Enterprise Modelling Language): The EU 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 version 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.
Outlook: 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. It is expected that UEML 2.0 will be realised within a new project. A proposal is underway.
For more information as for instance all project deliverables visit the project portal www.ueml.org
BPM2, 2nd Congress on Business Process Management, Munich, Germany, 2003-05-22/23. The congress was organised by NewMediaSales, Duesseldorf, Germany (www.newmediasales.com/) and was attended by over 100 people from both German industry and academia. Congress language was German and English with most of the documentation in English which is available against a fee.
In addition to the keynote paper and 12 presentations – including 3 case studies - that made up the BPM Congress, a special session with 6 presentations on the European project UEML (www.ueml.org) providing latest results on the Unified Enterprise Modelling Language development (see report above on UEML). The keynote paper presented by K-D Naujok, Global e-Business Advisory Council UN/CEFACT/TMG Chair, addressed business collaboration frameworks and technology in the context of BPM. The first part discussed an e-business collaboration modelling framework, identifying a UN/CEFACT Modelling Methodology (UMM) providing a business operational view with four individual, but related business views: domain, requirements, transaction and service view. The underlying principle being business requirements drive technology solutions. UMM is based on business entity flow graphs, which identify the business entities to be acted upon in the corresponding business activities and their states. Parts 2 and 3 presented the BPM related technology starting with identifying four critical success factors: familiar, trust, convenient and profitable and identifying relevant technologies applicable for the UMM described in Part 1.
The three case studies presented results from BPM applications in e-government, government related and industrial-organisations, whereas the remaining papers addresses different aspects of BPM ranging from its strategic value and contribution to organisation integration to measurements of business performance.
The Business Enterprise Integration Domain Task Force (BEIDTF) meeting, took place as part of the OMG Technical Meeting held in Paris on 2003-06-02/05. The BEIDTF meeting was attended by 15 people from 6 countries. Meeting objective was to review the Software Portfolio Management proposal and discuss presentations for a potential Request for Proposal (RFP) in Business Process Modelling. OMG is elaborating the BEIDTF Roadmap starting enterprise integration from the software implementation or middle layer with the target to capture business aspects of the enterprise. Other BPM presentations made: the UEML Project, the MEGA Process, the DEMO project to model human communication processes, MooD - Business Development and Transformation, Hyperknowledge and Increasing Business Reactivity with MDA/UML, all presentations posted at (www.omg.org/)
The joint work group IEC/SC 65A - TC 184/SC 5/JWG 15 on Enterprise Control System Integration held their meeting at London, UK on 2003-06-11/13 attended by participants from France 3, Germany 1, Italy 1, Switzerland 1, UK 1, USA 2. The meeting has resolved all outstanding comments on 62264-2 (Part 2 Object Model Attributes) received from Finland, France, Germany, Japan and the USA. Final editorial corrections will be made to the N42 document (62264-2) which then will become the official 62264-2 Draft to be sent out for re-vote starting in August 2003. Next meeting to take place at Washington DC, on 2003-10-13/15 , contact dennis_brandl@bellsouth.net.
The CIMOSA Association (COA) is a non-profit organisation involved in promotion of Enterprise Engineering and Integration based on CIMOSA and its active support in national, European and international standardisation. COA members are industrial and research organisations.