CIMOSA - News
Editor: Martin Zelm, Gehenbuehlstr. 18A, D-70499 Stuttgart,
martin.zelm@t-online.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.
The CIMOSA Association has started to populate the new Web site http://www.cimosa.de , which is intended to act as a focal point on Enterprise Engineering and Integration (EE&I). The following categories have been further populated by identifying relevant publications (title, abstract and source) and structuring the information in different sub-categories:
The KnowTech Forum, held at Potsdam/ Germany on
September 16-18, 1999 had the objective to bring together experts in the
various application fields of knowledge-, business-, software- and product
engineering and management in order to review various object-oriented and
process-oriented methods and technology concepts, tools and systems, and to
discuss possibilities to integrate future concepts.
A combination of various methods, standards, technologies,
tools and systems with new methods of linguistic and (meta) knowledge
engineering is considered the base for the development of an
"object-oriented and process-oriented meta reference model".
Acceptance and introduction of such a meta reference model is a prerequisite
for compatible models and tools for ExpertMaster, trade, products and software
reference.
An important goal of KnowTech is furthermore to create a
standardisation initiative in the field of normalised expert languages.
Therefore a collaboration with DIN, VDI/VDE, ISO and other organisations is
intended.
In five parallel workshops the subjects of user languages,
business knowledge engineering as well as possible implementations in open
standards based software solutions have been discussed. It was concluded that a
meta reference model expressed in user language can be very important in the
roadmap towards this vision.
The knowledge technology initiative is mainly driven by
business/economics faculties of universities, consultants and application
developers. For information contact : http://www.knowtech.net
Giga, the European Business Process & Workflow
Conference, Brussels, Belgium, 99-10-11/14. The conference was attended by an
international audience of about 150 people with IT background mostly from
industry. The conference was organised by the Giga Information Group and papers
were mostly on e-commerce and workflow applications. Paper sessions alternated
with Technology Test Labs in which 6 software vendors presented relevant
solutions. Vendors: Hewlett Packard, Interfacing Technology, ITT (In Tactical
Technologies), Microsoft, Compaq, ProActivity, Staffware.
The papers presented fell into 2 categories: 1) overviews on
the workflow market, its technologies including e-commerce and standards (WfMC
and EAN.UCC) and 2) applications. The latter covered very different types of
organisations like automotive, aerospace, telecommunication, banks, process
industries (oil and brewing), European Commission and consultants. Applications
are mainly on administrative processes like order processing, finance and
maintenance support.
Representing a very advanced approach in business process modelling, the paper by Bombardier Aerospace, Canada on their business process modelling application was one of the highlights of the conference. Bombardier appears to be one of the few organisations using business process models for process monitoring and decision support. They have linked the FirstSTEP business process model to Lotos Notes. Lotus Notes acts as a workflow application which is based on the FirstSTEP model. Operational data collected in Lotos Notes are transferred back into FirstSTEP for process analysis.
HP presented its Changengine, a software solution
which is aimed on e-commerce applications. It allows to model the processes
supporting e-commerce and connects those processes to the order web page. The
process model is rather simple identifying process activities, the control
flow, resources and responsibilities. Negotiations with other model providers
are underway.
ProActivity is a US based company represented in Belgium
and The Netherlands. Its software allows process model creation from textual
input, with support for model consistency. A graphical representation of the
model is created by the tool. The software is linked to workflow engines for
real life implementation.
Interfacing Technology presented their Tool Suite with
FirstSTEP Designer, Viewer, Charter for Visio and Unicenter TNG and its range
of applications in enterprise modelling.
The products presented by the other vendors were Compaqs Work Expeditor, Microsofts Digital Dashboard, Staffwares Workflow Solution and ITT together with Akazi Technologies their process editor Flowmind and support for integration of e-commerce and workflow automation. For information contact: http://www.gigaweb.com/ scripts forwarder.d11/ get.s/gigevent/C-6997-IC99.htm
At the CEN/TC 310 Meeting in Copenhagen (1999/10/20),
two new Work Items (WIs) for TC310 WG1 were discussed and it was agreed that
CEN will take the lead, but with full involvement of those members of ISO TC184
SC5 WG1 who wanted to take an interest. Two work items have been identified in
CEN and will be addressed at the Paris meeting of ISO TC184/5/1 on 99-12-14/16
:
- a new EN for ENV 40 003, CIM - Systems Architecture,
Framework for Enterprise Modelling. This is an ap-proved work item in the CEN
TC310 Business Plan.
- revision or otherwise of ENV 12204, CIM - Systems
Architecture, Constructs for Enterprise Modelling .
In addition, it is intended to a) discuss how these two items might be positioned within ISO TC184 SC5/WG1's work programme b) agree in broad terms how they relate to IS 15704, IS 14258 (with amendments), and the planned TC 184 SC5/WG1 New Work Item (NWI) on 'Rules for Process Interoperability' and c) map out a series of actions to hold a co-ordination meeting early in 2000 and to recommend and initiate the necessary parallel CEN and ISO WI approvals.
Special Issue in Computers in Industry, on ‘CIMOSA: CIM Open Systems Architecture - Evolution and Application in Enterprise Engineering and Integration’ with over 20 papers on evolution and applications of Enterprise Engineering and Integration, tools and infrastructures as well as standardisation has been published as Vol.40, Nr. 2-3 in November 1999.
CIMOSA Promotion material and literature
‘Enterprise Engineering and Integration - Why and How',
a primer on concepts, purpose and business value, CIMOSA Association, private
publication.
‘CIMOSA - a primer on key concepts, purpose and business
value’, CIMOSA Association. This brochure as well as other selected
papers, abstracts and literature hyperlinks are available at
http://www.cimosa.de and http://cimosa.cnt.pl.
CIMOSA Association
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.