CIMOSA - News

Vol. 6/4,  date 99-12-15


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.



Contents

CIMOSA Web Site

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:

Previous and current issues of the COA NEWS are available. The discussion Forum has not yet started. Contacts with publishers, ICT tool builders and documentation sources of EU research programmes have been established.

Major Events

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

Standardisation

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.

Publications

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.

Upcoming Events


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.